Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Peter 3:1
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in [both] which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:
1. This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you ] A new section of the Epistle opens. The “false teachers” recede from view, and the thoughts of the Apostle turn to the mockers who made merry at the delay of the coming of the Lord, to which Christians had so confidently looked forward as nigh at hand. In the stress laid on this being the “ second Epistle” we have a fact which compels us to choose between identity of authorship for both Epistles, or a deliberate imposture as regards the second.
I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance ] The word for “pure” is found in Php 1:10, the corresponding noun in 1Co 5:8 ; 2Co 1:12; 2Co 2:17. Its primary application is to that which will bear the full test of being examined by sunlight, and so it carries with it the sense of a transparent sincerity. Its exact opposite is described in Eph 4:18, “having the understanding” (the same Greek word as that here rendered “mind”) darkened. In the “stirring up by way of remembrance” we have a phrase that had been used before (chap. 2Pe 1:13).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you – This expression proves that he had written a former epistle, and that it was addressed to the same persons as this. Compare Introduction, Section 3.
In both which I stir up your pure minds … – That is, the main object of both epistles is the same – to call to your remembrance important truths which you have before heard, but which you are in danger of forgetting, or from which you are in danger of being turned away by prevailing errors. Compare the notes at 2Pe 1:12-15. The word rendered pure ( eilikrines) occurs only here and in Phi 1:10, where it is rendered sincere. The word properly refers to that which may be judged of in sunshine; then it means clear, manifest; and then sincere, pure – as that in which there is no obscurity. The idea here perhaps is, that their minds were open, frank, candid, sincere, rather than that they were pure. The apostle regarded them as disposed to see the truth, and yet as liable to be led astray by the plausible errors of others. Such minds need to have truths often brought fresh to their remembrance, though they are truths with which they had before been familiar.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
2Pe 3:1-2
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you.
St. Peters love token
I. The nature of it–a letter written. What shall we render to the Lord for His mercy in writing these blessed covenants?
II. The number of it–a second after the former. This second; not so much fearing the miscarriage of the first, as hoping to work better confirmation by the next.
III. The tenor of it–to stir up their minds. Why are the words of the wise compared to goads (Ecc 3:11) but to show that the best in Gods team need pricking forward?
IV. The order–by way of remembrance. This is a just order and method; first, to teach the way of the Lord, then to remind men of walking in it. We are not only called teachers, but remembrancers (Isa 62:6). (Thos. Adams.)
I stir up your pure minds.
A Christian memory
The power of memory is, perhaps, the most amazing part of our mental equipment. It is a golden thread that links infancy and age, on which are hung, like pearls, varied facts and experiences of every hue. Memory has her servant, recollection, an invisible librarian running about the chambers of the mind, to find what she calls for. Now God uses this faculty in the work of building up Christian character.
1. The gospel has a history to be remembered.
2. History repeats itself ordinarily; but this history of the gospel can never be repeated. Christ has suffered once for all. A Christian memory is swift to remember this.
3. In the revelation of His memorial name Jehovah has emphasised the significance of memory. He is not an abstraction, a far-distant personality, even, but the Father of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob–a historic God.
4. Again, keep in mind that the life of our Lord in glory is linked with that of His redemptive work on earth, as truly as your existence there, some day, will be connected with your residence here on earth.
5. Finally, a Christian memory holds in trust these historic dates of Christ and His redemption, because of the fact that they are to be the theme of adoring praise throughout eternity. (J. M. English, D. D.)
Mindful of the words which were spoken before.—
Mindfulness
I. The object of their mindfulness.
1. Words, for their plain certainty; not shadows and abstruse paradoxes.
2. Spoken before, for their antiquity; not things of yesterday; no new devices.
3. By the prophets, for the authority; men that had their commission immediately from God Himself.
4. Holy prophets, for the sanctity; they passed not through the lips of a Balaam, or Caiaphas.
5. The commandment of us, etc. The prophets were legal apostles, the apostles are evangelical prophets. Both these came to the world with commandments.
(1) Neither prophets nor apostles did ever command in their own names; but the former came with Thus saith the Lord, and the other in the name of Christ.
(2) St. Peter refers us to the words of the prophets and commandments of the apostles, and precisely chargeth our mindfulness with these lessons.
(3) Neither the prophets without the apostles, nor the apostles without the prophets, but both together. The gospel without the law may lift men up to presumption; the law without the gospel may sink them down to desperation.
(4) The rule of truth is delivered to us by the prophets and apostles.
II. Their mindfulness of that object. This consists in two things:
1. Observation. God never meant His Word for a vanishing sound; that which is kept upon eternal record in heaven, and is a constant dweller in the elected heart (Col 3:16), must not be a sojourner, much less a passenger, with us.
2. Conversation. It is a barren mindfulness that does not declare itself in a holy fruitfulness. Conclusion:
1. Let us desire the faculty and facility of doing; earnestly to desire it is one half, yea, the best half.
2. Let us be thrifty husbands of time and means to be spiritually rich.
3. Let us reduce all to practice. (Thos. Adams.)
Compendious commandments
Cultivate the habit of reflective meditation upon the truths of the gospel as giving you the pattern of duty in a concentrated and available form. It is of no use to carry about a copy of the Statutes at Large in twenty folio volumes, in order to refer to it when difficulties arise and crises come. We must have something a great deal more compendious and easy of reference than that. A mans cabin-trunk must not be as big as a house, and his goods must be in a small compass for his sea voyage. We have in Jesus Christ the Statutes at Large, codified and put into a form which the poorest and humblest and busiest amongst us can apply directly to the sudden emergencies and surprising contingencies of daily life, which are always sprung upon us when we do not expect them, and demand instantaneous decision. (A. Maclaren.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER III.
The apostle shows his design in writing this and the preceding
epistle, 1, 2.
Describes the nature of the heresies which should take place in
the last times, 3-8.
A thousand years with the Lord are but as a day, 9.
He will come and judge the world as he has promised, and the
heavens and the earth shall be burnt up, 10.
How those should live who expect these things, 11, 12.
Of the new heavens and the new earth, and the necessity of being
prepared for this great change, 13, 14.
Concerning some difficult things in St. Paul ‘s epistles,
15, 16.
We must watch against the error of the wicked, grow in grace,
and give all glory to God, 17, 18.
NOTES ON CHAP. III.
Verse 1. This second epistle] In order to guard them against the seductions of false teachers, he calls to their remembrance the doctrine of the ancient prophets, and the commands or instructions of the apostles, all founded on the same basis.
He possibly refers to the prophecies of Enoch, as mentioned by Jude, Jude 1:14-15; of David, Ps 1:1, c. and of Daniel, Da 12:2, relative to the coming of our Lord to judgment: and he brings in the instructions of the apostles of Christ, by which they were directed how to prepare to meet their God.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
This second epistle: this confirms what has been said, that this Epistle was written by Peter, as well as the former.
I stir up your pure minds; or, sincere minds: the sense is either:
1. I stir up your minds, that they may be pure and sincere; and then he doth not so much commend them for what they were, as direct and exhort them to what they should be, that they might receive benefit by what he wrote, there being nothing that contributes more to the fruitful entertaining of the word, than sincerity and honesty of heart, when men lay aside those things which are contrary to it, and might hinder its efficacy, 1Pe 2:1,2. Or:
2. I stir up your minds, though pure and sincere, to continuance and constancy in that pure doctrine ye have received.
By way of remembrance: see 2Pe 1:13.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. now“This now a secondEpistle I write.” Therefore he had lately written the formerEpistle. The seven Catholic Epistles were written by James, John, andJude, shortly before their deaths; previously, while having theprospect of being still for some time alive, they felt it lessnecessary to write [BENGEL].
unto youThe SecondEpistle, though more general in its address, yet includedespecially the same persons as the First Epistle was particularlyaddressed to.
pureliterally, “purewhen examined by sunlight”; “sincere.” Adulteratedwith no error. Opposite to “having the understandingdarkened.” ALFORDexplains, The mind, will, and affection, in relation to the outerworld, being turned to God [the Sun of the soul], and notobscured by fleshly and selfish regards.
by way ofGreek,“in,” “in putting you in remembrance“(2Pe 1:12; 2Pe 1:13).Ye already know (2Pe 3:3);it is only needed that I remind you (Jude5).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you,…. This is a transition to another part of the epistle; for the apostle having largely described false teachers, the secret enemies of the Christian religion under a profession of it, passes on to take notice of the more open adversaries and profane scoffers of it; and from their ridicule of the doctrine of Christ’s second coming, he proceeds to treat of that, and of the destruction of the world, and the future happiness of the saints: he calls this epistle his “second epistle”, because he had written another before to the same persons; and that the author of this epistle was an apostle, is evident from 2Pe 3:2; and which, compared with 2Pe 1:18 shows him to be the Apostle Peter, whose name it bears, and who was an eyewitness to the transfiguration of Christ on the mount, Mt 17:1: he addresses these saints here, as also in 2Pe 3:8, under the character of “beloved”; because they were the beloved of God, being chosen by him according to his foreknowledge, and regenerated by him, according to his abundant mercy; and were openly his people, and had obtained mercy from him, and like precious faith with the apostles; and were also the beloved of Christ, being redeemed by him, not with gold and silver, but with his precious blood; for whom he suffered, and who were partakers of his sufferings, and the benefits arising from them, and who had all things given them by him, pertaining to life and godliness, and exceeding great and precious promises; and were likewise beloved by the apostle, though strangers, and not merely as Jews, or because they were his countrymen, but because they were the elect of God, the redeemed of Christ, and who were sanctified by the Spirit, and had the same kind of faith he himself had. The Syriac and Arabic versions read, “my beloved”; and the Ethiopic version, “my brethren”: his end in writing both this and the former epistle follows;
in [both] which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance; that this was his view both in this and the former epistle, appears from 1Pe 1:13; he calls their minds pure; not that they were so naturally, for the minds and consciences of men are universally defiled with sin; nor are the minds of all men pure who seem to be so in their own eyes, or appear so to others; nor can any man, by his own power or works, make himself pure from sin; only the blood of Christ purges and cleanses from it; and a pure mind is a mind sprinkled with that blood, and which receives the truth as it is in Jesus, in the power and purity of it, and that holds the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. Some versions, as the Vulgate Latin and Arabic, render the word “sincere”, as it is in Php 1:10; and may design the sincerity of their hearts in the worship of God, in the doctrines of Christ, and to one another, and of the grace of the Spirit of God in them; as that their faith was unfeigned, their hope without hypocrisy, and their love without dissimulation, and their repentance real and genuine; but yet they needed to be stirred up by way of remembrance, both of the truth of the Gospel, and the duties of religion; for saints are apt to be forgetful of the word, both of its doctrines and its exhortations; and it is the business of the ministers of the word to put them in mind of them, either by preaching or by writing; and which shows the necessity and usefulness of the standing ministry of the Gospel: the particulars he put them in mind of next follow.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| Adhere to Words of the Prophets and Commandments of the Apostles. | A. D. 67. |
1 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: 2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:
That the apostle might the better reach his end in writing this epistle, which is to make them steady and constant in a fiducial and practical remembrance of the doctrine of the gospel, he, 1. Expresses his special affection and tenderness for them, by calling them beloved, hereby evidencing that he added to godliness brotherly-kindness, as he had (ch. i. 17) exhorted them to do. Ministers must be examples of love and affection, as well as life and conversation. 2. He evinces a sincere love to them, and hearty concern for them, by writing the same thing to them, though in other words. It being safe for them, it shall not be grievous to him to write upon the same subject, and pursue the same design, by those methods which are most likely to succeed. 3. The better to recommend the matter, he tells them that what he would have them to remember are, (1.) The words spoken by the holy prophets, who were divinely inspired, both enlightened and sanctified by the Holy Ghost; and, seeing these persons’ minds were purified by the sanctifying operation of the same Spirit, they were the better disposed to receive and retain what came from God by the holy prophets. (2.) The commandments of the apostles of the Lord and Saviour; and therefore the disciples and servants of Christ ought to regard what those who are sent by him have declared unto them to be the will of their Lord. What God has spoken by the prophets of the Old Testament, and Christ has commanded by the apostles of the New, cannot but demand and deserve to be frequently remembered; and those who meditate on these things will feel the quickening virtues thereof. It is by these things the pure minds of Christians are to be stirred up, that they may be active and lively in the work of holiness, and zealous and unwearied in the way to heaven.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Beloved (). With this vocative verbal (four times in this chapter), Peter “turns away from the Libertines and their victims” (Mayor).
This is now the second epistle that I write unto you ( ). Literally, “This already a second epistle I am writing to you.” For see Joh 21:24. It is the predicate use of in apposition with , not “this second epistle.” Reference apparently to I Peter.
And in both of them ( ). “In which epistles.”
I stir up (). Present active indicative, perhaps conative, “I try to stir up.” See 1:13.
Mind (). Understanding (Plato) as in 1Pe 1:13.
Sincere (). Old adjective of doubtful etymology (supposed to be , sunlight, and , to judge by it). Plato used it of ethical purity ( ) as here and Php 1:10, the only N.T. examples.
By putting you in remembrance ( ). As in 1:13.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Beloved. Occurring four times in this chapter.
Second – I write. An incidental testimony to the authorship of the second epistle.
Pure minds [ ] . The latter word is singular, not plural. Hence, as Rev., mind. The word rendered pure is often explained tested by the sunlight; but this is very doubtful, since eilh, to which this meaning is traced, means the heat, and not the light of the sun. Others derive it from the root of the verb eiJlissw, to roll, and explain it as that which is separated or sifted by rolling, as in a sieve. In favor of this etymology is its association in classical Greek with different words meaning unmixed. The word occurs only here and Phi 1:10. The kindred noun eijlikrineia, sincerity, is found 1Co 5:8; 2Co 1:12; 2Co 2:17. Rev., here, sincere.
Mind [] . Compare 1Pe 1:13; and see on Mr 12:30.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto
you.” “This second (in order) epistle (agapetoi) beloved ones” (ede) “at this moment” I write to you.
2) In both which I stir up your pure minds.”
(Greek en ais diegerio) “in (both) which I arouse” (eilikrine) the sincere (dianoian) mind of you.
3) “By way of remembrance.” (Greek en hu pomnesei) “by way (of a) reminder”. 2Pe 1:13; 2Ti 1:5-6; 2Ti 2:14.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. Lest they should be wearied with the Second Epistle as though the first was sufficient, he says that it was not written in vain, because they stood in need of being often stirred up. To make this more evident, he shews that they could not be beyond danger, except they were well fortified, because they would have to contend with desperate men, who would not only corrupt the purity of the faith, by false opinions, but do what they could to subvert entirely the whole faith.
By saying, I stir up your pure mind, he means the same as though he had said, “I wish to awaken you to a sincerity of mind.” And the words ought to be thus explained, “I stir up your mind that it may be pure and bright.” For the meaning is, that the minds of the godly become dim, and as it were contract rust, when admonitions cease. But we also hence learn, that men even endued with learning, become, in a manner, drowsy, except they are stirred up by constant warnings. (175)
It now appears what is the use of admonitions, and how necessary they are; for the sloth of the flesh smothers the truth once received, and renders it inefficient, except the goads of warnings come to its aid. It is not then enough, that men should be taught to know what they ought to be, but there is need of godly teachers, to do this second part, deeply to impress the truth on the memory of their hearers. And as men are, by nature, for the most part, fond of novelty and thus inclined to be fastidious, it is useful for us to bear in mind what Peter says, so that we may not only willingly suffer ourselves to be admonished by others, but that every one may also exercise himself in calling to mind continually the truth, so that our minds may become resplendent with the pure and clear knowledge of it.
(175) The Apostle evidently admits that they had a sincere or a pure mind, that is, freed from the pollutions referred to in the last chapter; but still they stood in need of being stirred up by admonitions: hence their minds were not, in a strict sense, perfect, though sincere. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
WHEN WILL CHRIST COME?
2Pe 3:1-18.
PROPHECY long since anticipated the distractions and divisions that should finally come to the visible Church. For some hundreds of years that prophecy has been increasingly converted into history, until today, the denominational bewilderment and the sectarian strife is little less distracting than was yesterdays war of all nations. The one feature of the world-conflict that brought to men increasing amazement, existed in the circumstance that when, in 1914, the long scabbarded sword suddenly leaped into deadly action, there was a boasted unity on the part of the Teutonic forces that filled the world with fear, and an evident lack of unity on the part of the allies that lost them the most important battles, and gave to neutral but friendly nations the keenest conceivable alarm. Trusting to their evident unity in opinion and practice, the Teutons reasoned that they could make mastery of the earth by the way of the mailed fist, and so hard were their blows and so loud was their boasting that timidity and fear took hold upon every man in an opposing camp. Then, almost without exception, the Allied nations appointed days of fasting and prayer, that the will of God might be known, and the way of the Lord adopted. The result was Teutonism increasingly divided and defeated, and the Allies increasingly unified and victorious.
A few years since, every theologian who opposed the premillennial position, called attention to the lack of unity among its representatives, and prophesied a speedy collapse of premillennialism. But when a company of honest men make honest appeal to God to show the way, and pledge themselves to walk in it, unity is ever the sure result, and today, in the visible Church of Jesus Christ, the one section that speaks a definite shibboleth with the least hesitation of tongue, the one section that reveals a company wherein men most accurately keep step one with another, the one section in which divisions and distractions most seldom occur, is, beyond dispute, the premillennial section.
Recently, however, there has arisen a slight divergence of opinion over the time element in our Lords Return, and men have been found who insist upon employing different words, such for instance as immediate, imminent, and remote, and debate has been the result.
It is in the double hope of discovering the absolute truth, and thereby effecting a harmony among my beloved brethren, that I, bring this subject to this Conference, and in the light of Peters words in the third chapter of his Second Epistle, I propose three questions concerning our Lords ReturnWas it to have been immediate? If not, is it still remote? If neither be true, then is it imminent?
WAS IT TO HAVE BEEN IMMEDIATE?
Prof. Shailer Mathews, in his discussion on Will Christ Come Again, contends that the early Christian writers, by whom he means our inspired spokesmen, believed that Christ would come immediately. In this opinion he is backed by a few expositors of premillennialism.
That, doubtless, was the early impression of some disciples. Such an impression seems to have been voiced by the questions with which they plied their risen LordLord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel? (Act 1:6). That would be natural from the Masters injunction to them, Therefore, be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh (Mat 24:44), and from the Masters statement, Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is (Mar 13:33). The language of the Apostle Paul, The night is far spent, the day is at hand (Rom 13:12), if it teach not immediateness, certainly has the suggestion of near approach. But that no inspired man ever employed a term synonomous with immediate, a word which means without the lapse of intervening time, is significant in the last degree, and ought to be an end of controversy upon the subject, and should for ever dispense with the employment of that word in pre-millennial literature.
Since His Return was not immediate it is logically certain that neither the Saviour, nor the inspired Prophet, nor Apostle, ever promised it should be, for the double reason that such a promise would have been to have fixed the date, a thing against which the Master solemnly inveighed, and also would have involved Gods failure to keep His word, a thing which has never come to pass, and, in the nature of the case, in fact, by the nature of God, never can.
The impression, was from the disciples wish rather than by the Divine Word. That wish was voiced in their question to the risen ChristLord, wilt Thou at this timeimmediatelyrestore again the kingdom to Israel? That fact is somewhat fully discussed by the Apostle from which my brethren have picked out a few words, forgetting and even ignoring the whole context.
James writes,
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the Coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh (Jas 5:7-8).
That fact was further elaborated in the language of Peter:
This Second Epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:
That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy Prophets, and of the commandment of us the Apostles of the Lord and Saviour. Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
And saying, Where is the promise of His Coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water, perished:
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same Word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is long suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2Pe 3:1-9).
The fact is also made still more clear by the Word of the Lord Jesus, recorded in Matthew 24, and in answer to the three questions, Tell us, when shall these things be? What shall be the sign of Thy Coming, and of the end of the world? If language means anything, the Masters reply means historyhistory great and important, and far-reaching in its results, to be wrought in between His answer and the day when the end of this age should come; and there is not an instance to be found in the Scripture when the time question was railed, without a reply that suggested some delay and consequent exercise of some patience on the part of the ardent lovers of the Lord.
The time element is suggested also in the parable of the nobleman, gone to a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return, and in the phrase, After a long time the lord of those servants cometh. The disciples of Jesus, at the time to which these texts refer, were, the most of them, not inspired men, and as yet they were but poorly instructed men. Their questions at times were crude, and their conceptions were mistaken, but the answers to those questions by the Lord, and by the inspired Prophets, were neither crude nor mistaken, but inerrant and dependable, and must forever provide the only basis for the Christians belief.
In the Divine Word, the doctrine of indefiniteness displaces immediateness. From time to time men have objected to the answers to the three questions When will Jerusalem be destroyed? What will be the sign of Thy Coming? and What of the end of the world? on the ground that Jesus reply seemed to make these things simultaneous or else following with such quick succession as to provide for neither intervening space nor time. It is a truth, however, as Beyschlag contends, that In the interpretation of prophecy, timelessness is a dominant element, and the sheet of the future is not outspread in such a way that the distinct time, point by point, could be measured upon it; but rather, is folded up in such a way that only a few successive events appear while the space of time that intervened between them disappeared. But wiser yet is the contention of Weiss, that prophecy is always conditional. God never says, through the lips of any Prophet, what is to happen, whether in the form of weal or woe, without a reference either expressed or understood to human conduct. On the contrary, He even runs the risk of appearing to contradict Himself by leaving prophecies of good unfulfilled when men sin, and of evil unfulfilled when they repent. The great purpose of Jesus in all He says about the future is not to satisfy curiosity but to direct conduct, the sum of His teaching being an urgent admonition to watchfulness. And it is evident to every reader of the New Testament that whatever might be the Fathers delay in sending His Son in power and glory, the whole appeal of Scripture is to the expectant attitude of the Churchwaiting, ready to receive Him at any moment.
This declaration might seem to render unnecessary the discussion of our second question with reference to the Lords Return
IS IT STILL SOMEWHAT REMOTE?
But not so! There are too many men backing that contention to pass them over without further and fuller notice. The advocates of the Lords remote return are to be found in three separate and distinct camps: first, in the camp of the critics, who in literal fulfilment of Peters prophecy, contend He will never come; second, in the camp of the conservative postmillennialists, who fix His Return at the close of the millennium; and third, in the camp of certain premillenarians, who defer His Return till further prophecy be converted into history. We are absolutely convinced that these respective companies are each and all without the backing of the Book, and we arraign each of them in turn as opposed to Revelation.
The first interpret the Scriptures concerning the Second Coming as figures of speech destined to no literal fulfilment. To show that I do them no injustice whatever by such indictment, let me quote from an acceptable representative, Prof. Shirley Jackson Case, of the University of Chicago. He writes: Undoubtedly the ancient Hebrew Prophets announced the advent of a terrible day of Jehovah when the old order of things would suddenly pass away. Later Prophets foretold a day of restoration for the exiles when all nature would be miraculously changed and an ideal kingdom of David established. The seers of subsequent times portrayed the coming of a truly Heavenly rule of God when the faithful would participate in millennial blessings. Early Christians expected soon to behold Christ returning upon the clouds even as they had seen Him in their visions literally ascending into Heaven. In times of persecution, faith in the Return of Christ shone with new luster, as affected believers confidently exclaimed, Behold, He cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and the saints shall reign with Him a thousand years. So far as the use of this type of imagery is concerned, millenarianism may quite properly claim to be biblical. Unquestionably certain biblical writers expected a catastrophic end of the world. They depicted the days of sore distress immediately to precede the visible Return of the Heavenly Christ, and they eagerly awaited the revelation of the New Jerusalem.
And yet, after having made such admissions concerning every claim that could be made by the most ardent premillennialist, he turns deliberately about and asserts, Biblical forms of the millennial hope are no longer tenable. And further advises that Since biblical hopes are incapable of being fully produced, men should cease from every form of millennium speculation and adopt outright a constructive policy of world betterment. In other words, the only hope for the final salvation of the world, presented by the theological skeptics of the twentieth century, is not in the Lord from Heaven, but rests with the man who is of the earth, earthy; or, to make it clearer still, it rests with that Boche who shall be brawny enough to club his weaker fellows into insensibility, or submissiona prospect as bright as a starless night, as attractive as eternal struggle, as alluring as an everlasting hell. Truly, Peters prophecy is finding literal fulfilment, and men of the Case type are agreeing with their old-world brethren Dean Inge, for instancethat the notion of the Second Coming is not now compatible with sanity, and with Dr. David Smith, Millennialism has gone the common way of absurdities in a more or less sane world, and have dared even to declare in a further speech, It was not the least of the blunders of the apostolic Church that she regarded the Second Advent as imminent; this way madness lies. For the comfort of believers, let it be remembered that one form of insanity is the opinion of its subjects that sane people are out of mind.
Postmillennialists accept the certainty of the Coming of the Lord, but at the close of the Millennium. To them, the Kingdom and Church are convertible, if not synonymous, terms. In the language of one of their greatest exponents, George Dana Boardman, they believe the Kingdom of God, viewed as an inception, has already come; viewed as a process, is ever coming; and viewed as a consummation, will have its end in the judgment. Then, and not till then, will Christ come.
In answer to this propaganda, it is sufficient to say that such an opinion has no harmony whatever with Revelation. It leaves the opening sentences of the twentieth chapter of the Revelation meaningless; it converts the thousand years that follow the Lords appearance in power, and His overthrow of the adversary, and that precedes the final resurrection and judgment of the wicked, from the true Millennium of Scripture, into a senseless figure. It makes the absent nobleman a present reigning king; it makes that sentence of the Lords Prayer Thy Kingdom come, a meaningless repetition of a petition long since answered; it makes the promises of His visible, glorious appearance, of His personal enthronement at Jerusalem, and the abdication of kings in His behalf, a senseless verbiage; it makes the description of a righteousness that shall obtain under His reign a travesty of terms; it makes the promise of prosperity, pledging every man his own vine and fig tree, a hollow mockery; it makes the prophecy of deserts converted into rose-beds a tantalizing hyperbole; it contains about as much sound exegesis of Scripture as is in the now popular declarationChrists Second Coming existed in the late World-War! Great men and good are now the advocates of this theory, but it is doubtful if any open-minded and diligent student of the Scripture has been able to receive the same.
By certain premillennialists that Blessed Hope has recently been deferred for fulfilling prophecy. I need not call these, our beloved brethren, by name; they have made themselves sufficiently known. Not a man of us but has been plied by their literature; every mail piles it upon our desks. My love of them is such that I read most of it, but up to the present time, I remain unconvinced of their contention.
We have been told that there is not a passage in Scripture that teaches the imminent Coming of Christ. I have been unable to find one that did not teach it, for there is a difference and a distinction between the words imminent and immediate. Immediateis without lapse of time. Imminentpossible to happen at any time.
We are told that the death of Peter, the final harvest, the great tribulation, the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom to all nations, the rise of the anti-christ, the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, including the rise of the ten kings out of the old Roman Empireall of this must come to pass before our Lord can come. I find myself unable to see how these brethren can plead necessary delay in the Lords Coming in view of the shifting scenes of history now in the making. The Lord is teaching us now, if He never taught us before, what marvelous changes may occur in a day. I cannot, therefore, consent that some considerable period must necessarily intervene before my Lords Appearance for His Church. It may be so, but the making of the period is with the Lord Himself, and whether He will extend it, or make it short, is as absolutely with Him as the very date of the Return. One of the most sensible things I have seen in this discussion is in Butlers Bible Work, (pg. 677).
The Coming of Christ may be distant as measured on the scale of human life, but may be near, at hand, at the door when the interval of the two advents is compared, not with the four thousand years which were but its preparation, but with the line of infinite ages which it is itself preparing. View the interval that spans the First and Second Coming, as we now do in the midst of it, and it swells to a vast extent; view it as we shall yet do from some far height in the measureless eternity of the Church triumphant; view it as these holy men were wont to dothe first stage in an infinite progressand it lessens to a point! The use of terms importing nearness, rapidity, immediate approach, which startle us as with the very presence of Christ, seem specially adapted to keep alive expectation, by bringing emphatically before us the perpetual possibility of an immediate manifestation and thus indirectly second all these express exhortations which make the hope and desire of the Coming of Christ a leading motive and impulse in the whole life of the Christian disciple. It is the confessed object of our blessed Master, in training His disciples for Glory, that they should, in the school of this world, learn such Divine arts as those of hope, of watchfulness, of fidelity, of earnest inquiry, of reverential awe. And this He accomplishes as in other ways, so by shrouding His march in mystery, revealing enough to win affection and to guide duty, but reserving His deeper purposes for the council-chamber of the Holy Trinity. It is His gracious will that this matter shall be the perpetual subject of watchfulness, expectation, conjecture, fear, desirebut no more. To cherish anticipation, He has permitted gleams of light to cross the darkness; to baffle presumption, He has made them only gleams. He has harmonized, with infinite skill, every part of His revelation to produce this general resultnow speaking as if a few seasons more were to herald the new heaven and the new earth, now as if His days were thousands of years. He who knows us best knows the deep devotion of watchfulness, humility, and awe to be the fittest posture for our spirits; therefore does He preserve the salutary suspense that insures it, and therefore will He determine His Advent to no definite day in the calendar of time.
And now for my final question concerning the Lords Return. We have seen that it was never promised as an immediate certainty; we have seen that it cannot be certainly remote; if neither, then
IS IT IMMINENT?
With three remarks I close. The plain words of Scripture make it ever imminent; the converging lines of fulfilling prophecy mark its imminence; the definite features of present history declare the soon-coming of that day.
The plain words of all Scripture make it imminent. If language is to have its original meaning, nothing can be made of the Masters words Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is, other than imminence. The language of Mat 24:44 conveys the imminent Coming of Christ. The parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins, followed by the injunction, Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh, loses its main point if imminent is not the word expressing the possibility of our Masters Return. Pauls Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which he says, We which are alive and remain unto the Coming of the Lord, clearly expresses his hope that it might come to pass in his lifetime. It would be difficult to give any intelligent meaning to the injunction to the Thessalonians to wait for His (Gods) Son from Heaven if he had known positively that their waiting would have been utterly in vain. Peter, in the Scripture which we make the starting point in this study, addresses the Christians of his day, calling them to a separate life, to holy conversation, and to the practice of Godliness * * unto the coming of the day of God. Paul, while enjoining patience, expresses the hope that yet a little while, and He that shall come will come. There is no word in the English language that so well sums up the mind of the Master, Prophet and Apostle alike, as does the word imminent.
The converging lines of prophecy mark its imminence. If there ever was a time when the argument for unfulfilled prophecy was effective, that time is now past. Peter is long since dead; false prophets have multiplied; pretending christs are common enough; wars and rumors of wars characterize every nation in the world; famine is sweeping its thousands and tens of thousands; pestilence is smiting in many nations; earthquakes are shaking continents; evil men are waxing worse and worse; disobedience to parents is the common observation; unfaithfulness and unholiness confront us at every turn; the Gospel of the Kingdom is being preached with a new fervor and effectiveness; the governments of the earth are being overturned, and overturned, and overturned; the Church of Jesus Christ increases more and more in her apostacy in both faith and conduct; in spite of the roar of world-battles, nothing less than deafening, the shrill piping of false prophets is heard above it all, crying, Peace! Peace!
The contending nations promised that whatever the fortunes of battle, Judea should go back to the Jew, and thousands of Jews are already engaged in raising funds for the reoccupation of Palestine, and the Zionist movement is one of the most significant of the twentieth century. Babylon is now in the hands of the people who will be fully capable of rebuilding it, and whose commercial power will be the fulfilment of that prophecy. The Turk, whose destruction was prophesied centuries since, is now in the agony of his last struggle, and the prophecy none shall help him is changing into history. The League for the Peace of all Nations will help to make the temporary enthronement of the anti-christ possible. One thing, and one only remains to be enacted to demonstrate forever to believer and unbeliever alike our exact location in time, and that is the descent of the Lord from the heavens to receive His ascending Bride, the entire company of risen and changed saints, whose spirits will attend Him in His descent (1Th 4:14), and whose bodies shall rise from earth to meet Him in the air (1Th 4:17). To be sure we are told that no Scriptures teach any such escape for the saints from the great tribulation that is to take place under the bloody hand of the anti-christ; but if not, then what is the meaning of these words from the pen of the inspired Paul? If not, how explain Luk 17:31-37; if not, of what is Isaiah telling when he makes the Lord say, Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast (Isa 26:20). If not, why did God prepare a place of safe ensconcement for the glorious woman, there to nourish her away from the face of the Serpent for a thousand two hundred and threescore days? (Rev 12:6).
The converging lines of fulfilling prophecy mark its imminence; and how near the hour of that translation may be, who can tell? Deepening shadows, darkening clouds, roaring thunders, moaning winds, have ever made the exact setting for the lightnings flash. Historically, the darkness deepens, the clouds blacken, war thunders in all the earth, every wind is laden with dying moans. The features of history face in one direction, and as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the Coming of the Son of Man be. For wheresoever the body isthat is the Body of Christ there will the eaglesor the saintsbe gathered together.
The increasing cry of the true Church suggests the imminent Coming. When Christ was born in Bethlehem the faithful hearts in Israel were in expectant prayer, and for that matter, the world, in its blindness, knew there was a portending something. Never since the day of Pentecost have the faithful of the earth stood up on tiptoe of expectation as they now stand. Their faces today are once more set like the faces of the early disciples, and the angels wordThis same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go, is at once their encouragement and the pledge of His Coming.
It may seem a strange procedure for the premillennialist to take, and yet, his language justifies it. I Want to conclude this discourse in the very words of George Dana BoardmanLet the sons of the Kingdom go forth and proclaim everywhere the approaching Basileia of God, * * and summon the nations to greet the advancing King. With the blind bard of the English Commonwealth, John Milton, let them pray, Come forth out of Thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth! Put on the visible robes of Thy Imperial majesty! Take up that unlimited scepter which Thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed Thee! For now the voice of Thy Bride calleth Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
WHAT MANNER OF PERSONS OUGHT WE TO BE?
2Pe 3:1-18.
THIS is the subject of the third chapter of this Second Epistle.
The Apostles objective in this chapter is easily evident. He is forced to the defensive by critics! He would stir up the minds of his brethren by way of remembrance and that which he would have them recall is the Word of holy Prophet and Apostles, arid, also of the Lord and Saviour, about the Second Coming.
Peter was not only ail Apostle, but also a Propheta Seer. God, who is a Revealer of Secrets, had brought the future within the Apostles vision. Even the last days were to him like the open pages of a book, and looking into them, he saw the scoffers who would come. The words he puts into their mouths: Where is the promise of His coming? his arguments against their infidelity, and his positive declaration of Divine Truth, might, each and all, be considered under three suggestions.
In this discussion, permit us to fellowship with Peters convictions and express these three points in the possessive case: Our Creed, Our Conduct, Our Christ.
OUR CREED
The time has come when thinking churchmen recognize the fact that the Second Coming of Christ is creating and completing a definite fellowship.
The men who entertain the Blessed Hope are bound together in a peculiar brotherhood: a brotherhood of increasing sweetness and deepening strength. No single denomination of the many that go to make up modern Protestantism, is as definite in its fellowship and as distinct in its doctrinal teaching as is the brotherhood of premillennialism.
In consequence of that fact, permit us to make three remarks, and then elaborate each in turn.
The Second Coming is now being especially emphasized. Whether we have come to the last days or not, no man can dispute the fact that we have come to the days when the number of biblically instructed men and women who entertain what the Apostle Paul called That Blessed Hope is enormous and is rapidly increasing.
The most marked religious movement of the twentieth century is the revival of Chiliasm. The Bible Training School is its educational expression; the Bible Conference, now indefinitely multiplied in numbers, is its expression in assembly; the thousands of pulpits interpreting the Scriptures from this standpoint, and the increasing wealth of literature devoted wholly to the definition and defense of this doctrine are the effective media of this propaganda!
While denying the charge that the movement is heavily financed and resenting, with the contempt it deserves, the indictment of disloyalty to the interests of human government, we frankly confess our deliberate determination to employ voice, pen, press, in fact every agency at our command to make known the greatest doctrine of all Scripture, namely, the Coming of our Lord.
No longer shall this precious Truth be left to the erratic and the irresponsible! Through the lips of sane men, and by the pens of the most scholarly the Church of God knows, and by the lives of the most saintly, this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations (Mat 24:14).
The only apology the advocates of this faith have to present to the public is one of tardiness. It is nothing short of amazing when a woman, in middle life, born and brought up in a Christian house and, for twenty-five years, living as the wife of a Christian minister of national reputation, asks, in all guilelessness, as one such recently asked the speaker, What is this doctrine about the Second Coming, and what is the word employed, premillennialismor something of that kind?
Before a question like that the advocates of this great hope ought to hang their heads for shame and determine, once for all, that God shall no longer be compelled to wink at the times of such ignorance.
When the dean of a theological seminary, known by both office and name, in more than one continent, attempts to discuss the subject, Will Christ Come Again? and reveals in multiplied sentences an utter ignorance of the premillennialists position, the advocates of this Blessed Hope should not so much blame him as blame themselves. Too long have we been silent on the one theme to which more of sacred Scripture is devoted than to any other subject about which inspired men ever employed tongues or pens!
But the thousands that waited upon the great Philadelphia Conference, the throngs that packed and overflowed the Moody Church, requiring at times three additional assembly rooms to accommodate them, when a few years since the Prophetic Conferences were held in Philadelphia and Chicago, the literal millions who attend upon the multiplied Bible assemblies and churches to hear the men who know this Truth, the sudden rise and unprecedented growth of Bible Training Schools, these all indicate the final awakening of ministers and laymen alike to that most precious and long neglected teaching, the Second Coming of Christ. Today it is in the ascendant, and for the first time since Daniel Whitby diverted men from this truth, it is accorded deserved emphasis.
Along with this new emphasis there has risen a passionate opposition. Peters prophecy is finding a literal fulfilment, and opponents are saying, Where is the promise of His Coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
One opponent of this truth, apparently troubled by the consciousness of his own choleric spirit, introduces his discussion with an apology to the feelings of the good people he intends to hurt. In a single city, recently, on three great public occasions, the chosen speaker of the hour, discussing in each instance a subject altogether aside, turned from his theme long enough to hold the Second Coming to scorn.
Go to the book-stores and ask for volumes on the Millennial Hope and when the salesman shall have stacked up twenty or more before your face, you will find that well-nigh one half of them are written from the standpoint of opposition; and while in most instances the titles would lead you to expect a sane and spiritual discussion of the subject, quite often the sub-title is a scoff, as, for instance The Millennial HopeA Phase of War-Time Thinking.
The most amazing fact in this connection is found in the circumstance that the line of argument against the Lords re-appearance has as perfectly paralleled Peters prophecy as though the writers had either never heard of this apostolic prediction, or knowing it, feared not in the least to take the part assigned them. In illustration, think of a statement like this, A modern man has various reasons for doubting the validity of present-day reconstructions of millennial hopes. In the first place mistrust is aroused by the utter failure of all past millennial programs to produce promised results. The apocalyptic visionary was never privileged to see his impending Kingdom of Heaven established upon earth. All early Christians millennial expectations have similarly miscarried. * * And yet even today some Christians continue to pursue the millennial mirage, vainly looking for a catastrophic end of the world instead of throwing themselves heart and soul into the task of improving the existing order, whose permanence is attested by centuries of disappointed millennial hopes.
Who could longer dispute Peters inspiration? If Daniel was granted a vision of empires to come, and so described them that now, at the end of more than 2500 years, the greater part of his prophecy has become history, certainly Peter was permitted to see the day, these two thousand years distant, when men should rise saying, Where is the promise of His Coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. * * But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Children must have promises made them, speedily fulfilled; mature men can wait and keep the spirit of expectancy.
The extent to which opposition to this truth may yet be carried we little dream. When the suggestion is made that the Government investigate the teachings of the premillennialists with a view to lodge, if possible, some indictment of disloyalty, it is not difficult to imagine the day when another portion of Gospel Word shall find fulfilment, And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child, and Gods saints shall have another opportunity to suffer with Him who suffered for them.
But all this only gives pith and point to my third remark concerning our creed.
The Second Coming of Christ is as sure as the promise of God.
The Lord is not slack concerning His Promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should Come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Peters whole appeal rests upon the plain declaration of Divine Scriptures. We would base our contention upon nothing else; we would bring our judgment from no other source! It is Peters conviction we share; the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it; we verily believe it will stand fast. What if men do scoff? What if passers-by wag their heads and say, Aha! Aha! Noah met all that, and yet went on building the ark. One hundred and twenty years is a long time to wait and watch for a flood that shall deluge the earth and destroy unbelievers. Scoffing against his prophecy must have seemed the safest of all procedures and the scoff itself came to sound like the only sanity; and yet, unless the tradition of every nation is mistaken and our sacred literature utterly misleading, Noahs prophecy was fulfilled and a drowned world demonstrated the dependableness of the Divine Word.
For hundreds of years the Prophets continually asserted the first coming of Christ, but history was so slow in running into that mould of inspiration, childish men ceased to regard what the inspired Prophets had spoken. When it eventually found fulfilment, one could count on the fingers of a single hand all the expectant of the earth.
Let the past prepare us against the days that are ahead and remind us of a truth often enough illustrated; namely, that Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled (Mat 5:18).
The minor sentences concerning His first appearance were never overlooked of God, forgotten, or fulfilled after some spiritual and unexpected way, but literally, accurately, exactly. So will it be again! His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, and The Law shall go forth of Zion, and His scepter shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. This is our creed!
But our creed, if it is worth anything to us, or has any value for the world, must eventuate in conduct. What then ought to be
OUR CONDUCT?
Seeing then that all these things shall he dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and Godliness,
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.
If it were permissible to change the phrasing of Holy Writ, I would like to write this text, Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and Godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat (2Pe 3:11-12).
In the judgment of Peter, premillennialism contains in itself a definite, spiritual appeal. If we follow him to the end of the argument in this matter, we will find that he expects this teaching to eventuate in definite and desirable practice. He thinks the hope of the Second Coming should eventuate in sanctity. He argues that this hope is to voice itself in sacrificial service, and he maintains that this hope should establish both mind and soul.
The hope of the Second Coming should eventuate in sanctity.
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and Godliness,
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.
Truth is important to the individual holding it, or to the people hearing it, in proportion as it is translated into practice. The times upon which we have fallen exhibit a turning away from sound doctrine; but even this defection from the faith is not so serious a hindrance to the cause of Christ as is the present-day defection in conduct. The worst heresy possible is not one of creed, but rather of character. That there is an intimate relation between false thinking and false living, no man questions; and if we are to impress the world with the value of the Second Coming propaganda, we will only do so by a diviner practice.
Upon this subject the Scriptures leave us in no uncertainty. We are enjoined to sincerity in view of the Second Appearance, that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ (Php 1:10).
We are enjoined to sobriety in view of the Second Appearance, since the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night, let us watch and be sober (1Th 5:6).
We are enjoined to purity in view of the Second Appearance, And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure (1Jn 3:3).
We are enjoined even to the mortification of fleshly lusts in view of the Second Appearance, When Christ, who is our Life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in Glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth (Col 3:4-5).
We are enjoined to holy conversation and Godliness in view of the Second Coming (2Pe 3:11-13). In the language of the inspired Apostle, time would fail me to tell of the victories that are related to this doctrine, as conclusions are related to premise, as result to cause.
But I recommend the reading of W. E. Blackstones book on Jesus is Coming where you will find a catalogue of forty practical doctrines that rest with the Coming of Christ.
Historically, sanctity has commonly been a consequence of this faith! Ignatius of Antioch was a holy man. He entertained this hope. Polycarp, the disciple of John, was a holy man. He entertained this hope. His friend and companion, Papias, not only taught this truth, but lived as became a man who entertained it. In fact, the Church Fathers, with few exceptions, were men known by two outstanding characteristicsnamely, their confident expectation of the Return of the Lord and the holy, spiritual character of the lives they led.
That the relationship of doctrine to practice is not destroyed by the progress of time, becomes evident when one recalls the names of John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, John Jewel, John Knox, John Milton, Samuel Rutherford and Thomas Chalmers, Paul Gerhardt and Michael Hahn, and in later time, of Horatius Bonar, George Whitfield, while with the modern school of Chiliasts, successors in this faith might be illustrated from the lives of such men as Charles Spurgeon, George Mueller, Andrew Murray, J. Hudson Taylor, Arthur T. Pierson, Dwight L. Moody, and A. J. Gordon.
We are confident that other pastors could bear an exact testimony with Dr. James M. Gray of Chicago, who declares that in his experience as a pastor he had found the members of his church who knew this truth to live spiritual lives and to be devoted to spiritual things. They also made up the most intelligent of his Bible students, manifested special power in prayer, exercised self-denial in giving, were most deeply interested in home and foreign missions, understood the great truths concerning the Holy Spirit and lived altogether the most consistent lives.
We may wisely hold Bible Conferences for the propagation of this precious Truth, but we should well know that after all, the practice of Godliness on the part of those who entertain and teach it, will be the finally effective power in rendering it popular in the Church of God.
Once more then, in the language of Peter, What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and Godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.
This hope should voice itself in sacrificial service.
Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless (2Pe 3:13-14).
The opponents of this precious truth have tried to make it appear that it paralyzes the individual endeavors of men, converting them into lazy lookers for a catastrophic end of the present social order and an easy introduction of the Utopian dream. But upon this matter, history has a right to be heard, and its pages are replete with answers to such an argument.
I speak not alone for my own denomination, but from a somewhat wide knowledge of the pastors and outstanding churches of other denominations, and I affirm it to be my observation in several countries and upon at least three continents that the most diligent service to the King of kings and the most self-sacrificing spirit in His behalf are found in those pulpits and pews where this precious hope is known. The denominational annuals would be a positive proof of this fact, and the statement would obtain not alone with reference to the larger gifts to home and foreign missions and the establishment of desirable Christian institutions; but even in the realm of social servicesuch as giving to the poor, providing for the hungry, clothing the cold, visiting the sick, sympathizing with the soldier, with the bereaved, showing brotherhood to the imprisoned and love for the social outcast, the advocates of premillennialism have never been surpassed.
It is an illustration worthy of mention that one man in my church who holds this doctrine most intelligently and advocates it most ardently, lives sixty miles distant and owns a little farm of eighteen acres worth not more than $5,000. He is a keeper of bees and of royally bred chickens. He comes to church about four times a year, namely, at conference or special meeting times, and remains a week at a stretch. When ten years ago I baptized him he amazed me by sending the treasurer $300.00 to be used for special missionaries on foreign fields, and with each returning season, he increases my amazement. When, one February, I was ready to enter my pulpit to make the annual appeal for foreign missions, the treasurer stole softly into my study and said, Pardon me, but I thought this little bit of paper might be an inspiration, and he handed me a check for $846.00, which, at a later time, was increased to the thousand mark. If this hope cuts the nerve of missions, would God that every man in my church had his nerve cut in the same manner. For a long time faithful folk have been praying that God would put it into the heart of some millionaire to give millions for foreign missions. Not long ago the prayer was answered and an honored citizen of Pennsylvania, later of California, turned over several million dollars to be used for foreign missions. He was an ardent premillennialist. Yes, Peter, diligence in the service of our God should be the result of this Blessed Hope.
But Peter finds a third result which should be always and everywhere manifested.
This Hope should establish the mind and the heart. He writes,
Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. (2Pe 3:17).
This statement is to be interpreted in the light of the context, for in the sixteenth verse Peter speaks of those who stumble from this doctrine because there are some things hard to be understood in it, and being unlearned about it, and unstable, wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction as they do also other Scripture.
Have you ever thought of the point of Pauls reasoning in the fifteenth of First Corinthians? It is after he has elaborated the Blessed Hope, the resurrection of the believers body and the consequent fellowship of all saints that he says, Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
Steadfastness of faith, immutability and creed, the Apostle claims as natural consequences of the great Second Coming truth, and we have reason today to thank God that church history is giving proof that advocates of that faith are not even failing in this evil time. In forty years in the ministry I have not known a single man who entertained at one and the same time the Blessed Hope of the Lords Return and yet called into question the Deity of Jesus Christ, the inspiration of the Book, or the final and utter authority of either.
Dr. B. H. Carroll, of Texas, the real founder of the public school system of that state, the moving spirit in the establishment of the great Waco or Baylor University, the father and founder of the Southwestern Theological Seminary, the most matchless preacher it has ever been my privilege to hear open his mouth in the Name of the Lord, was commonly counted a postmillennialist, and so esteemed himself. The last time it was my privilege to look upon his dear face he held my hand, and with trembling voice said, Riley, we have never seen eye to eye concerning the millennial period, but I want to say to you again as I said to you some years ago, that I hold in unfailing affection the premillennial brethren; and I declare it my conviction that in loyalty to the Word of God as well as to the Deity of Christ, they are not equalled by any company of men the world has known! Yes, it stabilizes both mind and soul!
But ere I conclude, let me join again with the great Apostle in a brief tribute to
OUR CHRIST
He, after all, is the basis of our creed and He alone is the adequate inspiration of conduct!
I. regret the necessity of abbreviating when I speak of Him. Peter does not conclude this argument until he pays tribute to Him; but he knows how to unite his praise to Christ with an appeal to Christians! But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. How rich the suggestions which we may bring from this verse! But it clearly involves the necessity of our spiritual growth.
Of Christs grace we should have an increased experience. Regeneration is essential to spiritual existence, but it is only the beginning. The grace that is in Christ is equal to much more than a mere beginning. The mother who brings the babe to birth has in her own body the infants sustenance, and the Christ who, by the Holy Ghost, begets us into a new life, has in Himself all spiritual sufficiency. Our ascended Lord has gifts for men, and a Christian who anticipates His descent should utilize those gifts and mark growth for himself.
This growth is extended by increasing knowledge of Him. In the judgment of the Apostle, to the experience of His grace we should add the acquisition of His knowledge. In fact, Peter aforetime said,
Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
According as His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and Godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue (2Pe 1:2-3).
Finally, to His Name we should bring expressions of never-ending glory.
To Him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
It is impossible to dwell upon the riches of His grace, and increase in the knowledge of Him, without coming to the point where one is compelled to glorify Him. Matthew Bridges, reflecting upon what Christ has been, what He is, and what He is to become, calls upon men to break forth into praises. Shall we not join him as he voices himself after this manner?
Crown Him with many crowns,The Lamb upon the throne;Hark, how the Heavily anthem drowns All music but its own!Awake, my soul, and sing Of Him who died for thee,And hail Him as thy matchless King Through all eternity.
Crown Him the Lord of years,The Potentate of time,Creator of the rolling spheres,Ineffably sublime!Crown Him the Lord of Love;Behold His hands and side,Where wounds yet visible above,In beauty glorified.
No angel in the skyCan fully bear that sight,But downward bends his burning eye At mysteries so bright.Glassed in a sea of light Whose everlasting waves Reflect His formthe Infinite Who lives and loves and saves.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
THE UNFULFILLED PROMISE OF THE COMING
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
THE apostle now deals with those who made the delay of the Lords coming, and the disappointment consequently felt by many Christians, an occasion for mockery. The sense in which the Early Church expected an early personal return of the Saviour, and based their expectation on the words of our Lord, and the teachings of St. Paul and St. Peter, needs to be carefully considered. Probably both the apostles and the Christian people gave a materialistic setting to what was intended to be spiritually realised. It has recently been confidently argued that our Lords supposed eschatological teachings should be limited to the destruction of the Jewish religious system in the Roman overthrow of Jerusalem, save when those teachings must have a spiritual application.
2Pe. 3:1. Second epistle.Assuming not only a first, but that first sent but a little while before. This epistle, already a second one. Pure.That is, separated, so unsullied, sincere (Php. 1:10). Its primary application is to that which will bear the full test of being examined by sunlight, and so it carries with it the idea of transparent sincerity.
2Pe. 3:2. Of the apostles.Through your apostles.
2Pe. 3:3. Scoffers.Scoffers shall come in their scoffing. Own lusts.The habit of self-indulgence is at all times the parent of the cynical and scoffing sneer. Scoffers revelling in scoffing, a cumulative expression to denote shameless scoffers.
2Pe. 3:4 Fathers.Here probably the first believers in Christ, who are represented as having proved the hope of Christs coming to be an illusion, as they died before it was realised.
2Pe. 3:5. Willingly.Wilfully forget, because it does not suit their purpose to remember. Ignore. Standing, etc.More precisely, formed out of water, and by means of water; implying possibility of the Flood. See the account of Creation in Genesis 1,
2. Plumptre says, The apostle speaks naturally from the standpoint of the physical science of his time and country, and we need not care to reconcile either his words, or those of Genesis 1, with the conclusions of modern meteorological science.
2Pe. 3:6. Whereby.By the two outlets of water. Gen. 7:11. World.This term distinctly assumes the universality of the Deluge. Perished.A term strictly applicable only to living creatures.
2Pe. 3:7. Reserved unto fire.This is part of the teaching of the book of Enoch. Scriptural allusions are thought to be found in Dan. 7:9-11; 2Th. 1:8, stored up for fire. By analogy with 2Pe. 3:5 we understand that the fire for which the present heavens and earth are reserved, exists now as a constituent in their original constitution, but prepared and designed as the agent of their dissolution. Science corroborates this.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.2Pe. 3:1-7
Doubts Concerning Christs Coming.It is important to notice that the apostolic letters assume previous apostolic teachings. In the progress of the years the apostles found various intellectual and moral evils were seriously affecting the religious thought and life of the disciples. Their epistles are mainly designed to be corrections of these evils, and special effort is made to recover the neglected features of apostolic teaching which ought to have made such errors and evils impossible. So St. Peter here speaks of stirring up their pure (sincere and reverent) minds by way of remembrance. A certain measure of authority was, from the first, felt to attach to apostolic utterances, because they were persons who had immediate and direct experiences, instructions, and revelations concerning the matters of which they spoke and wrote. We can fully recognise this reasonable authority without presenting in any exaggerated way their absolute freedom from error. It is manifested by the facts of history that they did not adequately apprehend the spiritual character of Christs coming, or the period that must elapse before He would come in any sensible manifestation.
I. Christs coming as apostles taught it.Their standpoint is indicated by the question which they asked of their Lord just before His ascension: Wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? Christ, in reply, only told them that He could give no account of the precise time, but left them to understand that the kingdom would be restored; and they had an immediate and pressing duty to perform, and keep on performing, until the time for setting up the kingdom came. With this in their minds they put their own meanings into the message of the angels who appeared when their Lord had passed out of sight: This Jesus, which was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven. On this basis an apostolic doctrine of Christs coming grew. At first they expected Him to appear when the cloven tongues appeared. Then they shifted their expectations to an immediate future, and, when they began to suffer persecutions, comforted themselves with the assurance that He was coming to vindicate them, and to judge their persecutors. Time passed on, and He did not come just as they anticipated; and some of their number died, unvindicated and unavenged, and deprived of whatever privileges were to attend the coming. But still they persisted that the day of the Lord is at hand. It does not appear that the spiritual sense in which believers have always felt that Jesus has fulfilled His promise was ever apprehended by the apostles. They had the promise and the hope, but they could only realise it when placed before them in a carnal and earthly setting. And that setting put it in limitations which started criticism and encouraged unbelief.
II. On what grounds could doubts of Christs coming again be cherished?There do not appear to have been any special forms of doubt in those days. The objections urged are precisely those which have been heard in every Christian age, and are heard to-day. They may go under two heads, and be put in relation to the two conditions of human thinkingtime and space; but they always assume, what we are by no means prepared to admit, that the coming is altogether and only sensible, material, and earthly. It is said
(1) He is always coming now, but the now never comes. It is said
(2) If He came in a material form He must put Himself in space-limitations, and could not possibly be the help and blessing that He is as an unlocalised, everywhere present, spiritual Saviour.
III. What facts of Divine dealing make all such doubts unreasonable?The scoffers put their scoffing in this form: You have told us of a coming affliction such as there has not been from the beginning of the creation, and lo! we find the world still goes on as of old, and no great catastrophe happens. St. Peters answer is that men spoke in just the same way concerning certain other great historical catastrophes and calamities. There is always human confusion when time-measures are applied to the Divine Being and His dealings with men. The threatened catastrophes always have come, and what men called delay had a Divine mission of warning and opportunity. Divine time-delay is never a basis on which doubts can reasonably rest. The only doubts in relation to the coming of the Lord permissible to Christians are those which lead them to question whether as yet they have quite sounded the fulness and depth of their Lords meaning, when He promised to come again. We ought to be advancing in spiritual power and insight, and so better able to read our Lords spiritual meanings. And he who can enter fully into the blissful reality of our Lords spiritual presence is relieved of all undue anxiety concerning a possible bodily manifestation. That is not first which is spiritual; but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual. Judgment of mankind is spiritual work. The reward of the righteous is spiritual reward. Christ is king of souls, and, here or yonder, then or now, He is the spiritual Christ who comes in spiritual ways. Still, for so many the spiritual truth has yet to keep its material shapings and dress, and they can only realise His coming at all when they can picture to themselves a majestic, sensible manifestation, wrapped about with clouds.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
2Pe. 3:4. Christs Coming.Notice
I. How St. Peter answers five questions relating to the last day.
1. Whether we are yet to wait confidently for the last day.
2. When, and at what time, it will come.
3. Why Jesus has not come for so long a time.
4. How, and in what manner, the last day will come.
5. What Christ will perform on that day.
II. How thoroughly he instructs us as to the manner of our preparing for it.
1. In holy conversation and godliness.
2. To wait patiently for, and hasten to it.
3. To give all diligence, that we may be found blameless by Christ.V. Herberger.
2Pe. 3:4. Death as Sleep.In the use of the verb to fall asleep for dying we are reminded of our Lords words, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth (Joh. 11:11); of St. Pauls, many sleep (1Co. 11:30). So in Greek sculpture Death and Sleep appear as twin genii, and in Greek and Roman epitaphs nothing is more common than the record that the deceased sleeps below. Too often there is the addition, as of those who are without hope, sleeps an eternal sleep. In Christian language the idea of sleep is perpetuated in the term cemetery (= sleeping place), as applied to the burial-place of the dead, but it is blended with that of an awakening out of sleep at the last day, and even with the thought, at first seemingly incompatible with it, that the soul is quickened into higher energies of life on its entrance into the unseen world.Dean Plumptre.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
IV. THE CHRISTIANS HOPE, 2Pe. 3:1-18
1. Christs Second Coming and the End of the World, 3:113
CHAPTER III
2Pe. 3:1-2 This is now, beloved, the second epistle that I write unto you; and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance; that ye should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles:
Expanded Translation
This, loved ones, is the second epistle (letter) that I now write to you. In both of these, I thoroughly arouse (literally, wake up) your honest, candid, and sincere minds by putting you in remembrance (reminding you of your duties and privileges in the Gospel); in order to call back to your mind the words which have previously been spoken by the holy (reverent, upright) prophets, and the commandment (charge) of the Lord and Saviour by (from) your apostles.
_______________________
One immediately notices the striking similarity of 2Pe. 1:12-13 to this passage.
This is now, beloved, the second epistle that I write unto you
Unless we assume the writer to be an utter imposter and deceiver, we must accept the fact that the Apostle Peter is the author of both New Testament books which bear his name. Throughout the book he speaks of himself as an apostle of Christ: 2Pe. 1:1; 2Pe. 1:14; 2Pe. 1:16-18, etc. The claim of the writer and the historical evidence are in favor of Peter as the inspired author. It remains for the higher critics to disprove this claim and evidence. See the Introduction.
and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance
Showing he had a common objective in writing both letters. Notice what Peter could stir upa sincere mind. This word (eilikrines, from the root words heile, sunshine, and krino, to judge) means properly, that which being viewed in the sunshine is found clear and pure. It is used here (as in Php. 1:10) metaphorically, and means pure, unsullied, undefiled, sincere, especially in the sense of being candid. When ones mind is not filled with deceit, sinister motives, hate, or evil thoughts, it can be aroused to love and good works! May each of us strive to keep our minds pure, and may they be found as such even when viewed in the sunlight of Gods Word!
that ye should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles
This statement provides somewhat of a summary of Peters writingsthe words of the prophets and apostles. Chap. 2Pe. 1:16-21 especially showed that the teachings of the prophets and apostles coincided with and corroborated each other concerning the person of Christ.
In the parallel statement of Jud. 1:17-18 is added: that they [the apostles] said to you, In the last time there shall be mockers . . . Similarly is 2Pe. 3:4 connected to the words of both the prophets and the apostles in this passage, Their words must be remembered and heeded unless we want to imbibe false doctrines!
The words which were spoken before by the holy prophets here has particular reference to the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the character and work of the Gospel Age. In view of the fact that the New Testament was not yet completed, an appeal to these prophetic utterances was very appropriate. Passages such as those found in Dan. 2:1-49, Isa. 2:1-22; Isa. 11:1-16; Isa. 53:1-12, Mic. 4:1-13, Jer. 31:1-40, Joe. 2:1-32all of which speak of the coming Messiah or the days following his adventshould often be brought to our memory. Especially is this necessary when false doctrine is about to creep into the churcha very evident danger here.
The commandment (entole) of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles refers to the whole scope of teachings we accepted when we came to Christ. Christians have had the holy commandments delivered unto them (2Pe. 2:21, where see notes) from which they must not turn back.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) This second epistle, beloved, I now write.Rather, This now second epistle I write, beloved; or, This epistle, already a second oneimplying that no very long time has elapsed since his first letter, and that this one is addressed to pretty much the same circle of readers. There is no indication that the first two chapters are one letter, and that this is the beginning of another, as has been supposed. With this use of now, or already, comp. Joh. 21:14.
Pure minds.The word for pure means literally separatedaccording to one derivation, by being sifted; according to another, by being held up to the light. Hence it comes to mean unsullied. Here it probably means untainted by sensuality or, possibly, deceit. In Php. 1:10, the only other place where it occurs in the New Testament, it is translated sincere. (Comp. 1Co. 5:8; 2Co. 1:12; 2Co. 2:17.) The word for mind means the faculty of moral reflection and moral understanding, which St. Peter, in his First Epistle (2Pe. 1:13), tells his readers to brace up and keep ready for constant use. These very two words are found together in a beautiful passage in Platos Phaedo, 66A.
By way of remembrance.We have the same expression in 2Pe. 1:13, and the translation in both cases should be the samestir up in putting you in remembrance.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
III.
(1, 2) Just as the two halves of the first main portion of the Epistle are linked together by some personal remarks respecting his reason for writing this Epistle (2Pe. 1:12-15), so the two predictions which form the second main portion are connected by personal remarks respecting the purpose of both his Epistles.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 3
THE PRINCIPLES OF PREACHING ( 2Pe 3:1-2 ) 3:1-2 Beloved, this is now the second letter that I have written to you, and my object in both of them is to rouse by reminder your pure mind to remember the words spoken by the prophets in former times, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour which was brought to you by your apostles.
In this passage we see clearly displayed the principles of preaching which Peter observed.
(i) He believed in the value of repetition. He knows that it is necessary for a thing to be said over and over again if it is to penetrate the mind. When Paul was writing to the Philippians, he said that to repeat the same thing over and over again was not a weariness to him, and for them it was the only safe way ( Php_3:1 ). It is by continued repetition that the rudiments of knowledge are settled in the mind of the child. There is something of significance here. It may well be that often we are too desirous of novelty, too eager to say new things, when what is needed is a repetition of the eternal truths which men so quickly forget and whose significance they so often refuse to see. There are certain foods of which a man does not get tired, necessary for his daily sustenance they are set before him every day. We speak about a man’s daily bread And there are certain great Christian truths which have to be repeated again and again and which must never be pushed into the background in the desire for novelty.
(ii) He believed in the need for reminder. Again and again the New Testament makes it clear that preaching and teaching are so often not the introducing of new truth but the reminding of a man of what he already knows. Moffatt quotes a saying of Dr. Johnson: “It is not sufficiently considered that men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.” The Greeks spoke of “time which wipes all things out,” as if the human mind were a slate and time a sponge which passes across it with a certain erasing quality. We are so often in the position of men whose need is not so much to be taught as to be reminded of what we already know.
(iii) He believed in the value of a compliment. It is his intention to rouse their pure mind. The word he uses for pure is eilikrines ( G1506) , which may have either of two meanings. It may mean that which is sifted until there is no admixture of chaff left; or it may mean that which is so flawless that it may be held up to the light of the sun. Plato uses this same phrase–eilikrines ( G1506) dianoia ( G1271) –in the sense of pure reason, reason which is unaffected by the seductive influence of the senses. By using this phrase Peter appeals to his people as having minds uncontaminated by heresy. It is as if he said to them: “You really are fine people–if you would only remember it.” The approach of the preacher should so often be that his hearers are not wretched creatures who deserve to be damned but splendid creatures who must be saved. They are not so much like rubbish fit to be burned as like jewels to be rescued from the mud into which they have fallen. Donald Hankey tells of “the beloved captain” whose men would follow him anywhere. He looked at them and they looked at him, and they were filled with the determination to be what he believed them to be. We always get further with people when we believe in them than when we despise them.
(iv) He believed in the unity of Scripture. As he saw it there was a pattern in Scripture; and the Bible was a book centred in Christ. The Old Testament foretells Christ; the gospels tell of Jesus the Christ; and the apostles bring the message of that Christ to men.
THE DENIAL OF THE SECOND COMING ( 2Pe 3:3-4 ) 3:3-4 To begin with, you are well aware that in the last days there will come mockers with their mocking, guiding their steps by the law of their own lusts and saying, “What has happened to the promise of his Coming? For, since the day when our fathers fell asleep, everything remains the same as it was from the foundation of the world.”
The characteristic of the heretics which worried Peter most of all was their denial of the Second Coming of Jesus. Literally, their question was: “Where is the promise of his Coming?” That was a form of Hebrew expression which implied that the thing asked about did not exist at all. “Where is the God of justice?” asked the evil men of Malachi’s day ( Mal 2:17). “Where is your God?” the heathen demanded of the Psalmist ( Psa 42:3; Psa 79:10). “Where is the word of the Lord?” his enemies asked Jeremiah ( Jer 17:15). In every case the implication of the question is that the thing or the person asked about does not exist. The heretics of Peter’s day were denying that Jesus Christ would ever come again. It will be best here at the beginning to summarize their argument and Peter’s answer to it.
The argument of Peter’s opponents was twofold ( 2Pe 3:4). “What has happened,” they demanded, “to the promise of the Second Coming?” Their first argument was that the promise had been so long delayed that it was safe to take it that it would never be fulfilled. Their second assertion was that their fathers had died and the world was going on precisely as it always did. Their argument was that this was characteristically a stable universe and convulsive upheavals like the Second Coming did not happen in such a universe.
Peter’s response is also twofold. He deals with the second argument first ( 2Pe 3:5-7). His argument is that, in fact, this is not a stable universe, that once it was destroyed by water in the time of the Flood and that a second destruction, this time by fire, is on the way.
The second part of his reply is in 2Pe 3:8-9. His opponents speak of a delay so long that they can safely assume that the Second Coming is not going to happen at all. Peter’s is a double answer. (a) We must see time as God sees it. With him a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. “God does not pay every Friday night.” (b) In any event God’s apparent slowness to act is not dilatoriness. It is, in fact, mercy. He holds his hand in order to give sinning men another chance to repent and find salvation.
Peter goes on to his conclusion ( 2Pe 3:10). The Second Coming is on the way and it will come with a sudden terror and destruction which will dissolve the universe in melting heat.
Finally comes his practical demand in face of all this. If we are living in a universe on which Jesus Christ is going to descend and which is hastening towards the destruction of the wicked, surely it behaves us to live in holiness so that we may be spared when the terrible day does come. The Second Coming is used as a tremendous motive for moral amendment so that a man may prepare himself to meet his God.
Such, then, is the general scheme of this chapter and now we look at it section by section.
DESTRUCTION BY FLOOD ( 2Pe 3:5-6 ) 3:5-6 What they wilfully fail to see is that long ago the heavens were created and the earth was composed out of water and through water; and through these waters the ancient world perished, when it was overwhelmed in a deluge of water.
Peter’s first argument is that the world is not eternally stable. The point he is making is that the ancient world was destroyed by water, just as the present world is going to be destroyed by fire. The detail of this passage is, however, difficult.
He says that the earth was composed out of water and through water. According to the Genesis story in the beginning there was a kind of watery chaos. “The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters…. God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters” ( Gen 1:2; Gen 1:6). Out of this watery chaos the world was formed. Further, it is through water that the world is sustained, because life is sustained by the rain which comes down from the skies. What Peter means is that the world was created out of water and is sustained by water; and it was through this same element that the ancient world was destroyed.
Further to clarify this passage we have to note that the flood legend developed. As so often in Second Peter and Jude the picture behind this comes not directly from the Old Testament but from the Book of Enoch. In Enoch 83: 3-5 Enoch has a vision: “I saw in a vision how the heaven collapsed and fell to the earth, and, where it fell to the earth, I saw how the earth was swallowed up in a great abyss.” In the later stories the flood involved not only the obliteration of sinners but the total destruction of heaven and earth. So the warning which Peter is giving may be put like this: “You say that as things are, so they have ever been and so they ever will be. You build your hopes on the idea that this is an unchanging universe. You are wrong, for the ancient world was formed out of water and was sustained by water, and it perished in the flood.”
We may say that this is only an old legend more than half-buried in the antiquities of the past. But we cannot say that a passage like this has no significance for us. When we strip away the old Jewish legend and its later development, we are still left with this permanent truth that the man who will read history with open eyes can see within it the moral law at work and God’s dealings with men. Froude, the great historian, said that history is a voice sounding across the centuries that in the end it is always ill with the wicked and well with the good. When Oliver Cromwell was arranging his son Richard’s education, he said, “I would have him know a little history.” In fact, the lesson of history is that there is a moral order in the universe and that he who defies it does so at his peril.
DESTRUCTION BY FIRE ( 2Pe 3:7 ) 3:7 But by the same word the present heavens and earth are treasured up for fire, reserved for the day of judgment and the destruction of impious men.
It is Peter’s conviction that, as the ancient world was destroyed by water, the present world will be destroyed by fire. He says that that is stated “by the same word.” What he means is that the Old Testament tells of the flood in the past and warns of the destruction by fire in the future. There are many passages in the prophets which he would take quite literally and which must have been in his mind. Joel foresaw a time when God would show blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke ( Joe 2:30). The Psalmist has a picture in which, when God comes, a devouring fire shall precede him ( Psa 50:3). Isaiah speaks of a flame of devouring fire ( Isa 29:6; Isa 30:30). The Lord will come with fire; by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh ( Isa 66:15-16). Nahum has it that the hills melt and the earth is burned at his presence; his fury is poured out like fire ( Nah 1:5-6). In the picture of Malachi the day of the Lord shall burn as an oven ( Mal 4:1). If the old pictures are taken literally, Peter has plenty of material for his prophecy.
The Stoics also had a doctrine of the destruction of the world by fire; but it was a grim thing. They held that the universe completed a cycle; that it was consumed in flames; and that everything then started all over again, exactly as it was. They had the strange idea that at the end of the cycle the planets were in exactly the same position as when the world began. “This produces the conflagration and destruction of everything which exists,” says Chrysippus. He goes on: “Then again the universe is restored anew in a precisely similar arrangement as before…Socrates and Plato and each individual man will live again, with the same friends and fellow-citizens. They will go through the same experiences and the same activities. Every city and village and field will be restored, just as it was. And this restoration of the universe takes place, not once, but over and over again–indeed to all eternity without end…. For there will never be any new thing other than that which has been before, but everything is repeated down to the minutest detail.” History as an eternal tread-mill, the unceasing recurrence of the sins, the sorrows and the mistakes of men–that is one of the grimmest views of history that the mind of man has ever conceived.
It must always be remembered that, as the Jewish prophets saw it, and as Peter saw it, this world will be destroyed with the conflagration of God but the result will not be obliteration and the grim repetition of what has been before; the result will be a new heaven and a new earth. For the biblical view of the world there is something beyond destruction; there is the new creation of God. The worst that the prophet can conceive is not the death agony of the old world so much as the birth pangs of the new.
THE MERCY OF GOD’S DELAY ( 2Pe 3:8-9 ) 3:8-9 Beloved, you must not shut your eyes to this one fact that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. It is not that God is dilatory in fulfilling his promise, as some people reckon dilatoriness; but it is that for your sakes he patiently withholds his hand, because he does not wish any to perish, but wishes all to take the way to repentance.
There are in this passage three great truths on which to nourish the mind and rest the heart.
(i) Time is not the same to God as it is to man. As the Psalmist had it: “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” ( Psa 90:4). When we think of the world’s hundreds of thousands of years of existence, it is easy to feel dwarfed into insignificance; when we think of the slowness of human progress, it is easy to become discouraged into pessimism. There is comfort in the thought of a God who has all eternity to work in. It is only against the background of eternity that things appear in their true proportions and assume their real value.
(ii) We can also see from this passage that time is always to be regarded as an opportunity. As Peter saw it, the years God gave the world were a further opportunity for men to repent and turn to him. Every day which comes to us is a gift of mercy. It is an opportunity to develop ourselves; to render some service to our fellow-men; to take one step nearer to God.
(iii) Finally, there is another echo of a truth which so often lies in the background of New Testament thought. God, says Peter, does not wish any to perish. God, says Paul, has shut them all up together in unbelief, that he might have mercy on all ( Rom 11:32). Timothy in a tremendous phrase speaks of God who will have all men to be saved ( 1Ti 2:4). Ezekiel hears God ask: “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, and not rather that he should return from his way and live?” ( Eze 18:23).
Ever and again there shines in Scripture the glint of the larger hope. We are not forbidden to believe that somehow and some time the God who loves the world will bring the whole world to himself.
THE DREADFUL DAY ( 2Pe 3:10 ) 3:10 But when it does come, the Day of the Lord will come as a thief and in it the heavens will pass away with a crackling roar; the stars will blaze and melt; and the earth and all its works will disappear.
It inevitably happens that a man has to speak and think in the terms which he knows. That is what Peter is doing here. He is speaking of the New Testament doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but he is describing it in terms of the Old Testament doctrine of the Day of the Lord.
The Day of the Lord is a conception which runs all through the prophetic books of the Old Testament. The Jews saw time in terms of two ages–this present age, which is wholly bad and past remedy; and the age to come, which is the golden age of God. How was the one to turn into the other? The change could not come about by human effort or by a process of development, for the world was on the way to destruction. As the Jews saw it, there was only one way in which the change could happen; it must be by the direct intervention of God. The time of that intervention they called the Day of the Lord. It was to come without warning. It was to be a time when the universe was shaken to its foundations. It was to be a time when the judgment and obliteration of sinners would come to pass and, therefore, it would be a time of terror. “Behold the Day of the Lord comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it” ( Isa 13:9). “The Day of the Lord is coming, it is near, a day of darkness and of gloom, a day of clouds and of thick darkness” ( Joe 2:1-2). “A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness” ( Zep 1:14-18). “The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” ( Joe 2:30-31). “The stars of the heaven and their constellations shall not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light…. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger” ( Isa 13:10-13).
What Peter and many of the New Testament writers did was to identify the Old Testament pictures of the Day of the Lord with the New Testament conception of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Peter’s picture here of the Second Coming of Jesus is drawn in terms of the Old Testament picture of the Day of the Lord.
He uses one very vivid phrase. He says that the heavens will pass away with a crackling roar (roizedon, G4500) . That word is used for the whirring of a bird’s wings in the air, for the sound a spear makes as it hurtles through the air, for the crackling of the flames of a forest fire.
We need not take these pictures with crude literalism. It is enough to note that Peter sees the Second Coming as a time of terror for those who are the enemies of Christ.
One thing has to be held in the memory. The whole conception of the Second Coming is full of difficulty. But this is sure–there comes a day when God breaks into every life, for there comes a day when we must die; and for that day we must be prepared. We may say what we will about the Coming of Christ as a future event; we may feel it is a doctrine we have to lay on one side; but we cannot escape from the certainty of the entry of God into our own experience.
THE MORAL DYNAMIC ( 2Pe 3:11-14 ) 3:11-14 Since these things are going to be dissolved like that, what kind of people ought you to be, living a life of constant holiness and true piety, you who are eagerly awaiting and doing your best to hasten on the Day of the Lord, by whose action the heavens will burn and be dissolved and the stars blaze and melt! For it is new heavens and a new earth, as he promised, for which we wait, in which righteousness has its home. So, then, beloved, since these are the things for which you eagerly wait, be eager to be found by him at peace, without spot and blemish.
The one thing in which Peter is supremely interested is the moral dynamic of the Second Coming. If these things are going to happen and the world is hastening to judgment, obviously a man must live a life of piety and of holiness. If there are to be a new heaven and a new earth and if that heaven and earth are to be the home of righteousness, obviously a man must seek with all his mind and heart and soul and strength to be fit to be a dweller in that new world. To Peter, as Moffatt puts it, “it was impossible to give up the hope of the advent without ethical deterioration.” Peter was right. If there is nothing in the nature of a Second Coming, nothing in the nature of a goal to which the whole creation moves, then life is going nowhere. That, in fact, was the heathen position. If there is no goal, either for the world or for the individual life, other than extinction, certain attitudes to life become well-nigh inevitable. These attitudes emerge in heathen epitaphs.
(i) If there is nothing to come, a man may well decide to make what he can of the pleasures of this world. So we come on an epitaph like this: “I was nothing: I am nothing. So thou who art still alive, eat, drink, and be merry.”
(ii) If there is nothing to live for, a man may well be utterly indifferent. Nothing matters much if the end of everything is extinction, in which a man will not even be aware that he is extinguished. So we come on such an epitaph as this: “Once I had no existence; now I have none. I am not aware of it. It does not Concern me.”
(iii) If there is nothing to live for but extinction and the world is going nowhere, there can enter into life a kind of lostness. Man ceases to be in any sense a pilgrim for there is nowhere to which he can make pilgrimage. He must simply drift in a kind of lostness, coming from nowhere and on the way to nowhere. So we come on an epigram like that of Callimachus. “Charidas, what is below?” “Deep darkness.” “But what of the paths upward?” “All a lie.” “And Pluto?” (The God of the underworld). “Mere talk.” “Then we’re lost.” Even the heathen found a certain almost intolerable quality in a life without a goal.
When we have stripped the doctrine of the Second Coming of all its temporary and local imagery, the tremendous truth it conserves is that life is going somewhere–and without that conviction there is nothing to live for.
HASTENING THE DAY ( 2Pe 3:11-14 continued) There is in this passage still another great conception. Peter speaks of the Christian as not only eagerly awaiting the Coming of Christ but as actually hastening it on. The New Testament tells us certain ways in which this may be done.
(i) It may be done by prayer. Jesus taught us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come” ( Mat 6:10). The earnest prayer of the Christian heart hastens the coming of the King. If in no other way, it does so in this–that he who prays opens his own heart for the entry of the King.
(ii) It may be done by preaching. Matthew tells us that Jesus said, “And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” ( Mat 24:14). All men must be given the chance to know and to love Jesus Christ before the end of creation is reached. The missionary activity of the Church is the hastening of the coming of the King.
(iii) It may be done by penitence and obedience. Of all things this would be nearest to Peter’s mind and heart. The Rabbis had two sayings: “It is the sins of the people which prevent the coming of the Messiah. If the Jews would genuinely repent for one day, the Messiah would come.” The other form of the saying means the same: “If Israel would perfectly keep the law for one day, the Messiah would come.” In true penitence and in real obedience a man opens his own heart to the coming of the King and brings nearer that coming throughout the world. We do well to remember that our coldness of heart and our disobedience delay the coming of the King.
PERVERTERS OF SCRIPTURE ( 2Pe 3:15-16 ) 3:15-16 Regard the Lord’s willingness to wait as an opportunity of salvation, as indeed our beloved brother Paul has written to us, in the wisdom which has been given to him, and as he says in all his letters, when he touches on these subjects, letters which contain some things which are difficult to understand, things which those who lack knowledge and a firm foundation in the faith twist, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Peter here cites Paul as teaching the same things as he himself teaches. It may be that he is citing Paul as agreeing that a pious and a holy life is necessary in view of the approaching Second Coming of the Lord. More likely, he is citing Paul as agreeing that the fact that God withholds his hand is to be regarded not as indifference on God’s part but as an opportunity to repent and to accept Jesus Christ. Paul speaks of those who despise the riches of God’s goodness and forbearance and patience, forgetting that his kindness is designed to lead a man to repentance ( Rom 2:4). More than once Paul stresses the forbearance and the patience of God ( Rom 3:25; Rom 9:22). Both Peter and Paul were agreed that the fact that God withholds his hand is never to be used as an excuse for sinning but always as a means of repentance and an opportunity of amendment.
With its reference to Paul and its tinge of criticism of him, this is one of the most intriguing passages in the New Testament. It was this passage which made John Calvin certain that Peter did not himself write Second Peter because, he says, Peter would never have spoken about Paul like this. What do we learn from it?
(i) We learn that Paul’s letters by this time were known and used throughout the Church. They are spoken of in such a way as to make it clear that they have been collected and published, and that they are generally available and widely read. We are fairly certain that it was about the year A.D. 90 that Paul’s letters were collected and published in Ephesus. This means that Second Peter cannot have been written before that and, therefore, cannot be the work of Peter, who was martyred in the middle sixties of the century.
(ii) It tells us that Paul’s letters have come to be regarded as Scripture. The misguided men twist them as they do the other Scriptures. This again goes to prove that Second Peter must come from a time well on in the history of the early Church, for it would take many generations for the letters of Paul to rank alongside the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
(iii) It is a little difficult to determine just what the attitude to Paul is in this passage. He is writing “in the wisdom which has been given to him.” Bigg says neatly that this phrase can be equally a commendation or a caution! The truth is that Paul suffered the fate of all outstanding men. He had his critics. He suffered the fate of all who fearlessly face and fearlessly state the truth. Some regarded him as great but dangerous.
(iv) There are things in Paul’s letters which are hard to understand and which ignorant people twist to their own ruin. The word used for hard to understand is dusnoetos ( G1425) , which is used of the utterance of an oracle. The utterances of Greek oracles were always ambiguous. There is the classic example of the king about to go to war who consulted the oracle at Delphi and was given the answer: “If you go to war, you will destroy a great nation.” He took this as a prophecy that he would destroy his enemies; but it happened that he was so utterly defeated that by going to war he destroyed his own country. This was typical of the dangerous ambiguity of the ancient oracles. It is that very word which Peter uses of the writings of Paul. They have things in them which are as difficult to interpret as the ambiguous utterance of an oracle.
Not only, Peter says, are there things in Paul’s writings that are hard to understand; there are things which a man may twist to his own destruction. Three things come immediately to mind. Paul’s doctrine of grate was twisted into an excuse and even a reason for sin ( Rom 6:1-23). Paul’s doctrine of Christian freedom was twisted into an excuse for unchristian licence ( Gal 5:13). Paul’s doctrine of faith was twisted into an argument that Christian action was unimportant, as we see in James ( Jas 2:14-26).
G. K. Chesterton once said that orthodoxy was like walking along a narrow ridge; one step to either side was a step to disaster. Jesus is God and man; God is love and holiness; Christianity is grace and morality; the Christian lives in this world and lives in the world of eternity. Overstress either side of these great two-sided truths, and at once destructive heresy emerges. One of the most tragic things in life is when a man twists Christian truth and Holy Scripture into an excuse and even a reason for doing what he wants to do instead of taking them as guides for doing what God wants him to do.
A FIRM FOUNDATION AND A CONTINUAL GROWTH ( 2Pe 3:17-18 )
3:17-18 As far as you are concerned. beloved, you have been forewarned. You must, therefore, be on your guard not to be carried away by the error of lawless men and so to fall from your own foundation; rather, you must see to it that you grow in grace and in understanding of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
To him be glory both now and to the day of eternity.
In conclusion Peter tells us certain things about the Christian life.
(i) The Christian is a man who is forewarned. That is to say, he cannot plead ignorance. He knows the right way and its rewards; he knows the wrong way and its disasters. He has no right to expect an easy way, for he has been told that Christianity means a cross, and he has been warned that there will always be those who are ready to attack and to pervert the faith. To be forewarned is to be forearmed; but to be forewarned is also a grave responsibility, for he who knows the right and does the wrong is under a double condemnation.
(ii) The Christian is a man with a basis for life. He ought to be rooted and founded in the faith. There are certain things of which he is absolutely certain. James Agate once declared that his mind was not a bed to be made and remade but that on certain things it was finally made up. There is a certain inflexibility in the Christian life; there is a certain basis of belief which never changes. The Christian will never cease to believe that, “Jesus Christ is Lord” ( Php_2:11 ); and he will never cease to be aware that there is laid on him the duty of making his life fit his belief.
(iii) The Christian is a man with a developing life. The inflexibility of the Christian life is not the rigidity of death. The Christian must daily experience the wonder of grace, and daily grow in the gifts which grace can bring; and he must daily enter more and more deeply into the wonder which is in Jesus Christ. It is only on a firm foundation that a great building can tower into the air; and it is only because it has a deep root that a great tree can reach out to the sky with its branches. The Christian life is at once a life with a firm foundation and with an ever outward and upward growth.
And so the letter finishes by giving glory to Christ, both now and to the end of time.
-Barclay’s Daily Study Bible (NT)
FURTHER READING
2 Peter
C. Bigg, St. Peter and St. Jude (ICC; G)
C. E. B. Cranfield, 1 and 2 Peter and Jude (Tch; E)
J. B. Mayor, The Second Epistle of St. Peter and the Epistle of St. Jude (MmC; G)
J. Moffatt, The General Epistles: James, Peter and Jude (MC; E)
Abbreviations
ICC: International Critical Commentary
MC : Moffatt Commentary
MmC: Macmillan Commentary
NCB: New Century Bible
Tch: Torch Commentary
E: English Text
G: Greek Text
-Barclay’s Daily Study Bible (NT)
Fuente: Barclay Daily Study Bible
III. ERROR OF EXPECTING A NEAR ADVENT CORRECTED, 2Pe 3:1-18.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1. The fatal error of expecting Christ’s immediate coming, from the immediateness of the terms in which it is predicted, 2Pe 3:1-13.
1. This Literally, This epistle, already beloved a second, unto you I write. The first chapter is a general, yet direct, introductory address; the second chapter steps aside to portray the corruptionists to come; this resumes and finishes the direct epistle.
Now Literally, already; it is already a being-completed second epistle.
Pure minds In contrast with those corrupt minds whose portraiture occupies the last chapter. Those are the ungodly men of 2Pe 3:7, bound to perdition; while you, warned of that day of judgment, will (2Pe 3:17) beware.
Remembrance The apostle delivers not so much a new prophecy as he recalls, explains, and applies a whole body of old prophecies.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Call To Them To Remember What They Have Been Taught ( 2Pe 3:1-2 ).
He calls to their minds his own previous letter. Later in the chapter he will also call to their mind the letters of Paul. He clearly considers that both are to be seen as Scripture. Compare how he had previously called to their attention the teaching of the prophets on the basis that they were also Scripture as men spoke from God moved by the Holy Spirit (2Pe 1:19-21). It is through these that they know the words of the prophets and the commandments of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which they are to follow so that they walk in the true way, the way of righteousness.
For his call to remembrance here we can compare 2Pe 1:12-13;2Pe 1:15. See also Act 10:31, again in words of Peter. Peter was fond of bringing things to remembrance, following his Master’s example.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
‘This is now, beloved, the second letter that I write to you, and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance, that you should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandments of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles,’
Peter now refers them back to his first letter. There are no good grounds for not seeing this as referring to 1 Peter. In that letter also he had reminded them of the words of the prophets (1Pe 1:10-12; compare 2Pe 1:19-21), and of the teaching of Jesus Christ (given throughout the letter). Thus his great concern in both letters is seen to be to bring home to them the teachings of the prophets, and the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself, the latter as revealed through the Apostles who had been eyewitnesses and hearers of all that He did and said (1Pe 5:1). Now he is reminding them of it again.
‘The commandments of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles,’ might be referring to what Peter and his fellow-Apostles is now teaching them or it may be seen as pointing to a body of tradition established by the Apostles which provided basic details of Jesus’ life and teaching. Such a tradition appears to underlie the Gospels. This may even have been in written form (see Luk 1:2). We can compare parallel references to ‘The Testimony of Jesus’ (Rev 1:2; Rev 1:9; Rev 12:17; Rev 19:10; compare 1Ti 1:8).
‘To your sincere mind.’ The word sincere means ‘judged by the sun’. In other words their minds have been brought into the light of the sun in order to demonstrate their genuineness. They are walking in God’s light (1Jn 1:5-7).
‘Through your Apostles.’ Either the whole band as those appointed by Jesus Christ to be the source of His truth to His people as promised in John 14-16, or the particular members of that band who have been working among the recipients. This is in contrast to the false prophets who were leading many astray. He wants them to recognise where the true authority lay. They themselves enjoyed the blessing of being guided by the true Apostles of Christ, who were ‘their’ Apostles because they themselves were the true people of God. It could even be that some of the false teachers were claiming to be Apostles (compare 2Co 11:12-13), something that Peter is rejecting here.
‘Putting you in remembrance.’ It has been pointed out by sceptics that there is no mention in 1 Peter of ‘remembering’, and it is true that the actual word is not found there. But it really cannot be doubted that much of his exhortatory material in 1Pe 2:11 to 1Pe 3:17; 1Pe 4:1 to 1Pe 5:10 is based on general Apostolic teaching which looked back to Jesus Christ Himself, which they already knew and which he is calling to their remembrance. So he is certainly ‘bringing it to their remembrance’ there. There can be little doubt, therefore, that he would have seen himself as having ‘put them in remembrance’ in both letters.
Note the double emphasis on remembrance here, ‘putting you in remembrance that you should remember’. Compare 2Pe 1:12-13; 2Pe 1:15 for similar repetition. For the connecting of the Prophets and the Apostles compare Luk 11:49; Eph 2:20; Eph 3:5.
The method of address, ‘beloved’, parallels 1Pe 2:11; 1Pe 4:12. For ‘holy prophets’ compare Peter’s words in 2Pe 1:21; and see his words in Act 3:21. But see also Luk 1:70.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Warning of the Coming of Scoffers In 2Pe 3:1-4 the apostle Peter warns the believers that scoffers will come and mock those who believe in the Second Coming of Christ Jesus.
2Pe 3:1 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:
2Pe 3:1
2Pe 3:1 “in both which” Comments – The Greek phrase ( ) is made up of the preposition and a plural pronoun , so that Peter is referring to both of his epistles addressed to the churches of northern Asia Minor, whose purpose was to stir up their pure minds. Thus, the NKJV says, “in both of which” The AmpBible reads, “In (both of) them”
2Pe 3:1 “I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance” Comments The description of stirring up means to wake up or arouse. When we bring to mind those things w have been taught in the past, we begin to talk about them and to renew our efforts to practice them in our lives.
2Pe 3:2-3 Scripture Reference – We find a similar passage to 2Pe 3:2-3 in Jud 1:17-18.
Jud 1:17-18, “But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.”
2Pe 3:2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:
2Pe 3:2
2Pe 3:2 Comments – 2Pe 3:2 refers to words spoken both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament when it refers to the prophets and apostles. God used the office of the prophet to write the Old Testament and the office of the apostle to write the New Testament. When the prophets of old died, the Old Testament canon was closed, and when the apostles of the Lamb died, the New Testament canon was closed. According to 2Pe 3:2 the words of the New Testament apostles are place on equal authority with the Old Testament prophets.
Therefore, when 2Pe 2:1 refers to false prophets, he is contrasting them to those who truly stood in that office to deliver unto Israel the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament canon. This is reflected in the statement by Peter, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” (2Pe 1:21)
2Pe 3:3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
2Pe 3:3
2Pe 3:3 “that there shall come in the last days scoffers” – Comments – We are in last days, beginning with the day of Pentecost (Act 2:17). Peter explains in 2Pe 3:8 that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. Thus, the word “days” used in this verse can refer to several thousand-year periods. Since the days of the early apostles until today, a period of two thousand years has elapsed. Peter used the term “last days” rather than saying the last few thousand years.
Act 2:17, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:”
Scoffers one ones who mock and ridicule others. In the Greek text we find the Hebrew idiom using two words, which are translated “scoffers in scoffing.” Note other English versions:
ASV, “ mockers shall come with mockery”
Rotherham, “ with scoffing, scoffers”
2Pe 3:3 “walking after their own lusts” Comments – These mockers live their lives to satisfy their own lusts.
2Pe 3:4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
2Pe 3:4
2Pe 3:4 Comments – In past times, scoffers have said that nothing has changed. We see this in a number of Old Testament Scriptures:
Isaiah’s time:
Isa 5:19, “That say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it!”
Jeremiah’s time:
Jer 7:15, “And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim.”
Ezekiel’s time:
Eze 11:3, “Which say, It is not near; let us build houses: this city is the caldron, and we be the flesh.”
Eze 12:22-25, “Son of man, what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth? Tell them therefore, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say unto them, The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision. For there shall be no more any vain vision nor flattering divination within the house of Israel. For I am the LORD: I will speak, and the word that I shall speak shall come to pass; it shall be no more prolonged: for in your days, O rebellious house, will I say the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord GOD.”
In Jesus’ time:
Mat 24:48, “But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;”
Obviously, things are not as they were at the time of creation. However, the carnal mind sees no change in the times, and he has no faith in God’s Word that its prophecies will come to pass. We have testimonies all across the world of the great Flood that destroyed the earth during the time of Noah. Yet, these people ignore this witness of divine judgment. Since the time of creation, the characteristics of the earth have drastically changes because of the Flood. We see a reference to the earth before the flood in 2Pe 3:5, after the flood in 2Pe 3:6 and its pending destruction in the last days in 2Pe 3:7.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Our Perseverance: The Certainty of Christ’s Return 2Pe 3:1-13 places emphasis upon the believer’s perseverance in the midst of those who deny the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. Warning of the Coming of Scoffers 2Pe 3:1-4
2. The Story of Creation 2Pe 3:5-7
3. The Certainty of the Second Coming 2Pe 3:8-10
4. Our Call to Perseverance 2Pe 3:11-13
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Certain Coming of Christ and Its Lessons.
A warning against scoffers:
v. 1. This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance,
v. 2. that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior;
v. 3. knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts
v. 4. and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. The apostle here, in his usual manner, opens a new section of his letter, and the tone employed by him shows that he desires to impress the truths now following with special solemnity: This letter, beloved, I now write you as the second, in which I rouse your pure mind by way of remembrance. Both letters of Peter had had the same aim, in a way, his purpose being to teach his readers, to remind them of the fundamental truths of Christianity once more, to give them practical hints as to the performance of Christian obligations, to arouse and encourage them in their Christian duties. He says that he wants to stir up their pure, their sincere Christian mind, that mind which is always open to instruction and admonition from the Word of God.
Of this aim Peter writes: That you may be reminded of the words spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of your apostles, of the Lord and Savior. That is the chief function of the teacher in the Christian Church, to put the souls entrusted to him in remembrance of all the truths which were revealed to us by both the prophets and the apostles. There is no discrepancy between the Word of God in the Old and that in the New Testament, no contradiction. The chief content of both is Jesus Christ the Savior, the Hope of the believers in the time before His incarnation and the Trust of the believers ever since. The commandment of the apostles briefly characterizes the entire content of the Christian doctrine, for it is given to us for obedience in faith and in holiness, 1Jn 3:23-24; 1Ti 6:14. What the apostles taught was, at the same time, the commandment of our Lord and Savior; for it was He that called them as the teachers of mankind to the end of time; it was He whose Spirit inspired them to write the great truths that are to make us wise unto salvation.
The apostle now singles out one great truth with the purpose of warning his readers: Knowing this first of all, that there will come in the last days mockers with their scoffing, going on according to their own desires and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the time that the fathers fell asleep all things remain just as they have been from the beginning of creation. His readers, the Christians of all times, should know this, in order not to be surprised at its coming. There would be mockers, or scoffers, at the end of the days, just before the Day of Judgment. These men, many of them highly intelligent, learned men, are noted for their scoffing denial of the coming of Judgment. In books, articles, and lectures such men calmly and with a great show of wisdom, demonstrate that it is against science, against reason, to believe in the corning of the Judgment Day; they treat the very idea of a possible truth of the Bible-account with scorn and derision. The nearer the last day comes, the more rapidly the number of these scoffers increases, and the bolder they grow in their assertions. There is a real source of danger here, especially for inexperienced young people that are overawed by the show of learning displayed by the mockers. But the Christian should note the reason for this attitude, namely, the fact that such people go on, walk, conduct themselves, according to their own desires and lusts. Of God and of His holy will they want to know nothing; their one object in life is to enjoy to the full the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And it is because of the fact that the thought of the Lord’s return to Judgment disturbs them in their life of sin and shame that they attempt to ridicule the idea of the last day. Their conscience tells them that, no matter what form their selfishness assumes, they will have to render an account to the Lord. Hence their mockery, the outflow of a bad conscience: “Where is that promised coming of the Lord in whom you Christians profess to believe? The laws of nature are unchangeable; matter is eternal; and this world will remain forever. The believers of the Old Testament that hoped in the coming of the Lord died without having seen the fulfillment of their hopes, and thus it will be always.”
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
2Pe 3:1
This Second Epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; literally, this Epistle already a second one I write unto you. The (“already”) implies that the interval between the two Epistles was not long. The expression “beloved,” four times repeated in this chapter, shows the apostle’s affectionate interest in his readers; and the word “second” forces us to make our choice between the Petrine authorship of the Epistle or the hypothesis of a direct forgery. In both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance; literally, in which, i.e., “Epistles;” the word “second” implied an allusion to a First Epistle. St. Peter repeats the words which he had used in 2Pe 1:13, “I think it meet to stir you up by putting you in remembrance.” Mind () is the reflective faculty (see 1Pe 1:13); that faculty should be exercised in holy things. The thoughts that pass through the Christian’s mind should be holy thoughts; his mind should be pure. The word rendered “pure” () occurs in Php 1:10 (where see note); the corresponding substantive is found in 1Co 5:8; 2Co 1:12; 2Co 2:17. It is said of things which can bear to be judged in the sunlight, and so means “pure, clear,” or (according to another possible etymology) “unmixed,” and so “genuine, sincere.”
2Pe 3:2
That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets. “That ye may be mindful” is represented by one word in the Greek (); compare the exact parallel in Luk 1:72. Great stress is laid on the word of prophecy in both Epistles (see 1Pe 1:10-12 and 2Pe 1:19). And of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour; rather, as in the Revised Version, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles. All the best manuscripts read here. It is a remarkable expression; but Christ’s apostles can be rightly called the apostles of those to whom they are sent, as being their teachers, sent to them for their benefit; just as the angels of God are called also the angels of Christ’s little ones (Mat 18:10). Compare also “the angels of the seven Churches” in the Revelation. St. Peter shows an intimate knowledge of several of St. Paul’s Epistles, and of that of St. James; he is writing to the Churches addressed in his First Epistle, most of which were founded by St. Paul or his companions. We must therefore understand this passage, as well as verse 15 of this chapter, as a distinct recognition of the apostleship of St. Paul. The translation of the Authorized Version, “the apostles of the Lord and Saviour,” involves a violent disturbance of the order; it seems best to make both genitives depend on “commandment:” “your apostles’ commandment of the Lord;” the first genitive being that of announcement, the second of origin. The commandment was announced by the apostles, but it was the Lord’s commandment. (For the double genitive, comp. Jas 2:1 and Act 5:32. For the whole verse, see the parallel passage in Jud Act 1:17.)
2Pe 3:3
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers. (For the irregular construction of , see Winer, 3:63, 2, a.) St. Peter has the words, “knowing this first,” in 2Pe 1:20, where he is speaking of the interpretation of prophecy; he repeats them now when referring to the scoffers who mocked at the long delay of the Lord’s coming foretold by the prophets. (For “the last days,” see note on 1Pe 1:20.) The Revised Version has, “Mockers shall come with mockery.” This represents the words , found in nearly all the best manuscripts, which give emphasis to the expression after the Hebrew manner. The word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and , scoffers, only in the parallel passage, Jud 18. Walking after their own lusts. Self-indulgence often leads to skepticism. This verse is quoted in a homily ascribed to Hippolytus.
2Pe 3:4
And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? (comp. Mal 2:17, “Where is the God of judgment?”). The Lord had prophesied of his coming; St. Paul had spoken more than once as if that coming were very near at hand (1Co 15:51; 2Co 5:4; 1Th 4:15). Yet he came not. Already men were beginning to mock, and to question whether the long-delayed promise would ever be fulfilled. For since the fathers fell asleep; better, from the day that. By “the fathers” must be meant here the fathers of the Christian Church. St. Peter was writing more than thirty years after the Ascension. The first generation of Christians was rapidly passing away. Stephen “fell asleep” first, then James the son of Zebedee, the other James the Lord’s brother, and many others who had looked, it may be, to see the coming of the Lord among those “which are alive and remain” (1Th 4:17). But they had died, and he came not; and from the day of their death things went on as they were. Should men look for him still, the mockers asked, when the fathers looked in vain? The mockers adopted, in mockery, doubtless, the Christian phrase for death. The Lord first had said, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth ;” then the holy Stephen “fell asleep;” and so “they which are asleep” became the recognized name for the dead in Christ. Death is like sleep; the holy dead rest from their labours. They “sleep not idly,” for they are at home with the Lord, and they are blessed; but yet the quiet rest of Paradise, though “far better” than this earthly life, is sleep compared with the perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, which the redeemed of the Lord shall enjoy at last in his eternal glory. All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation; literally, all things continue thus, as they are, and as they have been from the beginning. There has been no sudden catastrophe; the world has gone on as it was; the laws of nature are still working with their changeless uniformity” (see a remarkable parallel in Clement, I, 23, which is important also as an independent proof that this argument of the scoffers is as old as the end of the first century).
2Pe 3:5
For this they willingly are ignorant of; literally, for this escapes them of their own will. All things have not always been as they are; there have been great changes; there was once a great catastrophe; but this they willfully forget, Huther translates differently, “For, whilst they assert this, it is hidden from them that,” etc. But this rendering seems forced and unsatisfactory, and gives a meaning to which it has nowhere in the New Testament. That by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water. The Revised Version translates, That there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the Word of God. The mockers say that all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. That creation itself was a great, a stupendous change, a mighty effort of the power of God.
St. Peter refers to it in words evidently derived from the Book of Genesis, not from any other sources, whether Greek, Egyptian, or Indian. There were heavens from of old (the word occurs elsewhere only in 2Pe 2:3). There was an earth formed or standing out of the water. The Greek participle here used is , literally, “standing together or consisting” (comp. Col 1:17); it may be taken closely with both prepositional Clauses, “earth consisting of water and by means of water.” Thales had taught that water was the beginning of things, the original element ( ); the narrative in Genesis represents water as originally overspreading all things: “The earth was without form [, Septuagint], and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” We may therefore understand St. Peter as meaning that the earth was formed or compacted out of water, or out of those substances which the water at first held in solution; and that it is kept together in coherence and solidity by means of water. If, on the other hand, we regard the participle as closely connected with the second preposition only, the meaning will be that the earth, held together and compacted by means of water, rose up out of the water, and appeared above it, when God said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” It is possible, again, to understand the preposition locally, and to translate “amidst water.” Comp. Psa 136:6, “He stretched out the earth above the waters;” and Psa 24:2, “He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.” Of course, neither St. Peter nor Moses is speaking in the language of science; their object was, not to teach scientific truth, but to present the great fact of creation in an aspect suitable to our poor capacities. For the clause, “by the Word of God ( ),” comp. Heb 11:3, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God ( ).” St. Peter may be referring to the formula, “And God said,” so constantly repeated in the account of the creation, or (what is really the same truth) to the fact that “all things were made by him [by God the Word], and without him was not anything made that was made.”
2Pe 3:6
Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. The Greek for” whereby” is , literally, “through which things.” The plural here presents some difficulty. The most obvious antecedents are “the heavens and the earth” of the last verse; but many commentators refer the relative to the twice-repeated “water.” The meaning will be the same whichever view we take. “The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened;” that is, the Deluge was brought to pass by means of the heavens, i.e., the waters that were above the firmament, and the earth, i.e., the waters that were below the firmament, which came from the earth as the waters first mentioned came from the heavens. Another possible view is that of Huther, who refers to the water and the Word of God. By the world here must be meant the world of living creatures. This is St. Peter’s answer to the mockers: there had been one great catastrophe; there will be another.
2Pe 3:7
But the heavens and the earth, which are now; rather, the heavens which are now, and the earth. The “now” does not refer, as some think, to any change wrought by the Flood, but distinguishes the present heavens and earth from the new heavens and new earth, which Christians are to look for (2Pe 3:13). By the same Word are kept in store, reserved unto fire. Several of the better manuscripts have “by his Word,” which, on the whole, seems to give the best meaning. The reading in the text may, indeed, be understood in a similar sense, “by the same Word of God;” otherwise it would mean that the original word of creation determined also the duration of the world and the means of its destruction. The words rendered, “are kept in store,” are, literally, “have been treasured ( )” (comp. Rom 2:5). It seems better to take the dative (“with fire,” or “for fire”) with this verb rather than with the following, as in the Authorized Version. If we take the first meaning of the dative, the sense will be that the world has been stored with fire, i.e., that it contains, stored up in its inner depths, the fire which is destined ultimately to destroy it. But the other view seems on the whole more probable; the heavens and the earth are stored up for fire or unto fire, i.e., with the purpose in the counsels of God of their ultimate destruction by fire. This is the clearest prophecy in Holy Scripture of the final conflagration of the universe; but comp. Isa 66:15; Dan 7:10; Mal 4:1; 2Th 1:8. Such a doctrine formed part of the physical theories of the Stoics; it is also found in the ‘Book of Enoch.’ Against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. The participle “reserved” () is best taken with this clause: “Reserved against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
2Pe 3:8
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing; literally, let not this one thing escape you, as especially important. That one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. “With the Lord” means in his sight, in his estimate of things (comp. Psa 90:4, “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday”). Bengel finely says, “Dei aeoniologium (sic appellare liceat) differt ab horologic mortalium. Illius gnomon omnes homis simul indicat in summa actione et in summa quiete. Ei nec tardius nec celerius labuntur tempera quam ipsi et oeconomiae ejus aptum sit. Nulls causa est cur finem rerum aut protelare aut accelerare necessum habeat. Qui hoc comprehendemus? Si comprehendere possemus, non opus foret a Mose et Petro addi, apud Dominum.” God is eternal: his thought is not, like ours, subject to the law of time; and even we can understand that one day, as the day of the Saviour’s death, may have far more of intense action compressed into it, and far more influence upon the spiritual destiny of mankind, than any period of a thousand years. This passage seems to be quoted by Justin Martyr, the ‘Epistle of Barnabas,’ Irenaeus, and Hippolytus; but they may be referring to Psa 90:1-17, though the quotations resemble the words of St. Peter more closely than those of the psalm.
2Pe 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness. The Lord here, as frequently in these Epistles, is God the Father; it is he only who knoweth that day and that hour (Mar 13:32). Some take the genitive with “the Lord,” and translate, “The Lord of the promise is not slack.” This is a possible connection, but, not so satisfactory as the ordinary rendering. (For the genitive with the verb , see Winer, 3:30, 6, b.) The latter clause may be understood, “as some think it, i.e., the delay of the judgment, to be slackness;” or better, perhaps, “as some understand the meaning of slackness.” Men are slow in fulfilling their promises from various, often selfish, motives; the Lord’s delay comes from love and long-suffering. But is long-suffering to us-ward; rather, to you-ward, which seems to be the best-supported reading; two ancient manuscripts give “for your sake.” St. Peter has the same thought in the First Epistle (1Pe 4:1-19 :20); there he reminds us how the long-suffering of God waited while the ark was a-preparing; here he tells us that the delay of the judgment, at which unbelievers scoff, is due to the same cause. We note here an item of evidence for the common authorship of the two Epistles. Not willing that any should perish; rather, not wishing or desiring ( ). The participle gives the reason of the Lord’s delay; he hath no pleasure that the wicked should die (Eze 18:23, Eze 18:32, and Eze 33:11). But that all should come to repentance. The G reek word for “come” (), occurs in the same sense in Mat 15:17, ). Calvin takes it transitively, “willing to receive all to repentance.” But the common translation is plainly right.
2Pe 3:10
But the day of the Lord will come. The word , will come, stands emphatically at the beginning of the clause; whatever the mockers may say, whatever may happen, come certainly will the day of the Lord. “The day of the Lord” meets us often in the prophets; it is usually associated with the thought of judgment (see Isa 2:12; Eze 13:5; Joe 1:15; Mal 3:2). In the New Testament it signifies the second advent of Christ (1Th 5:2; 1Co 1:8; Php 1:6; 2Th 2:2). As a thief in the night. The best manuscripts omit here “in the night.” St. Peter is evidently echoing the Lord’s words in that great prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives, which must have made such a deep impression upon the apostles. This illustration of the sudden coming of the thief is repeated not only by St. Peter here, but also by St. Paul (1Th 5:2), and twice by St. John (Rev 3:3 and Rev 16:15). In the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise. The Greek for “with a great noise ()” occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and is one of those remarkable poetic forms which are not unfrequent in this Epistle: the noun is used of the whizzing of arrows, of the rush of wings, of the sound of mighty winds or roaring waters. It may be understood here of the crash of a falling world or of the roar of the destroying flames. The word rendered “pass away” is that used by our Lord in the prophecy just referred to (Mat 24:35; also in Mat 5:18 and in Luk 16:17). And the elements shall melt with fervent heat. It is uncertain whether by “the elements” () St. Peter means the four elements (in the old and popular use of the word), or the great constituent parts of the universe, the heavenly bodies. Against the first view is the assertion that one of those elements is to be the agent of destruction. But the word rendered “melt” means “shall be dissolved” or “loosed;” and it may be, as Bishop Wordsworth says, that “St. Peter’s meaning seems to be that the , elements or rudiments, of which the universe is composed and compacted, will be loosed; that is, the framework of the world will be disorganized; and this is the sense of in the LXX. (Wis. 7:17; 19:17) and in Hippolytus, ‘Philos.,’ pages 219, 318. The dissolution is contrasted with the consistency described by the word in verse 5. The heavens are reserved for fire, and will pass away with a rushing noise, and, being set on fire, will be dissolved; the elements will be on fire and melt, and he reduced to a state of confusion; the earth and the works therein will be burnt up. There does not seem, therefore, to be any cause for abandoning the common meaning of , the elemental principles of which the universe is made.” On the other hand, the word is certainly used of the heavenly bodies by Justin Martyr (‘Apolog.,’ 2. c. 5, and ‘Dial. cum Tryphon,’ c. 23); and the heavenly bodies are constantly mentioned in the descriptions of the awful convulsions of the great day. The objection that the word does not bear this meaning elsewhere in Holy Scripture is of little weight, as this is the only place in which it has a physical sense. The literal translation of the clause is, “The elements, being scorched, shall be dissolved.” The word for “being scorched” () occurs in the New Testament only here and in verse 12; it is used by the Greek physicians of the burning heat of fever. The verb means “shall be dissolved or loosened.” The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. By “the works that are therein” St. Peter seems to mean all the works both of God and of man, “opera naturae et artis” (Bengel). There is a very remarkable reading here (supported by the Sinaitic and Vatican and another uncial manuscript), , “shall be discovered,” instead of , “shall be burned up.” If we understand “the works that are therein” of man’s works and actions, this reading will give a good sense. Or the clause may be regarded as interrogative, “Shall the earth and the works that are therein be found?” But the reading, “shall be burned up” is well supported, and suits the context best.
2Pe 3:11
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved; rather, seeing that all these things are being dissolved. The participle is present, and implies the certainty of the event foretold, and, perhaps, also that the germs of that coming dissolution are already in being, that the forces which are ultimately to bring about the final catastrophe are even now at work. Some of the better manuscripts read, instead of , then, , thus: “seeing that all these things are thus being dissolved.” What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness? The Greek word for “what manner of persons” means literally, “of what country;” it seems to point to the great truth that God’s people are fellow-citizens of the saints, that the commonwealth of which they are citizens is in heaven. The word for “to be” is the emphatic , which denotes original, essential, continuous being. (On the word for “conversation” (, behaviour, conduct), see note on 1Pe 1:15.) Both this noun and the following are plural in the Greek, and therefore mean “in all aspects and forms of holy conduct and godliness.” Some commentators connect these last words, “in all holy conversation and godliness,” with the next verse: “looking in all holy conversation,” etc. Some, again, understand this verse as asking a question, which is answered in the next; but the Greek word for “what manner of persons” () seems to be used in the New Testament as an exclamation only, not interrogatively.
2Pe 3:12
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God. The preposition “unto” is inserted without authority. The second participle is followed directly by the accusative, and is evidently transitive. In the Septuagint Version of Isa 16:5, represents the “hasting righteousness” of our translation (comp. Pindar, ‘Isthm.,’ Isa 5:22, where means “to pursue virtue”). Here the translation “hastening” is most appropriate. The Father hath put the times and seasons in his own power; but as the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, so now he is “long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish;” and in his gracious mercy waits for the repentance of his chosen. St. Peter seems to represent Christians as “hastening the coming [literally, ‘presence’] of the day of God” by working out their own salvation, and helping to spread the knowledge of the gospel (Mat 24:14), and so rendering the long-suffering patience of God no longer necessary. The words imply also the duty of praying for that coming, as we do in the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, and in the Funeral Service, “Beseeching thee, that it may please thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom.” Compare St. Peter’s speech in Act 3, where he says, “Repent ye therefore that so ( ) there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ” (verses 19, 20, Revised Version). This remarkable coincidence of thought furnishes an argument of considerable weight in favour of the genuineness of this Epistle. Another possible rendering of the word is “earnestly desiring,” which is adopted in the text of the Revised Version, and is preferred by some commentators. Wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved. The Greek for “wherein” is , on account of which, i.e., on account of the day of God, or, what comes to much the same meaning, on account of the coming, the presence, of that day. Old things must pass away because of the coming of the day of God; the old order must give place to new. And the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The apostle repeats the striking words which he had already used in Isa 16:10, with a different verb. The Greek word for “shall melt” here is not , as in Isa 16:10, but a stronger word , are being melted, or wasted away. The tense is the prophetic present, implying a certain fulfillment. There is probably a reference to Isa 34:4, where the Septuagint rendering is .
2Pe 3:13
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth; rather, but, according to his promise, we look for. The promise is that in Isa 65:17, “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth” (see also Isa 66:22 and Rev 21:1). St. John saw in vision the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah and St. Peter: “The first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” It may be that, as the water of the Deluge was the baptism of the ancient world into a new life, so the fire of the great day will be the means of purifying and refining the universe, transforming it into new heavens and a new earth, making all things new. Our Lord’s use of the word “regeneration,” in Mat 19:28, seems to favour this view. In the regeneration of the individual soul the personality remains, the thoughts, desires, affections, are changed; so, it may be, in the regeneration of the world the substance will remain, the fashion () of the old world will pass away (1Co 7:31). But it is impossible to pronounce dogmatically whether the new heavens and earth will be a reproduction of the old in a far more glorious form, through the agency of the refining fire, or an absolutely new creation, as the words of Isaiah seem to imply. St. John, like St. Peter, speaks of a new earth, and tells us that that new earth will be the dwelling-place of the blessed. He saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven; the throne of God and of the Lamb (he tells us) shall be in it: “The tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them.” The holy city, Jerusalem, which is above, is in heaven now; the commonwealth of which the saints are citizens is in heaven (Php 3:20). But heaven will come down to earth; the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be there; there his servants shall serve him. The distinction between earth and heaven will be abolished; for where God is, there is heaven. Wherein dwelleth righteousness (comp. Isa 60:21, “Thy people shall be all righteous;” also Isaiah lay. 25; Rev 21:27; Rom 8:21).
2Pe 3:14
Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things; rather, these things, the coming of the Lord, the restitution of all things, the new heavens and the new earth. Be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless; literally, give diligence (or, be earnestthe same word which is used in 2Pe 1:10) to be found without spot and blameless in his sight in peace. Christians who look for the coming of Christ must earnestly strive to imitate their Lord, the “Lamb without blemish and without spot.” In the word , “without spot,” we have a link with 1Pe 1:19. The word for “blameless” () is found elsewhere only in Php 2:15. The dative should be rendered, not “of him” or “by him,” but “in his sight” or “before him.” Peace is used in its fullest sensepeace with God and with man; the peace which Christ giveth; “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” “In peace” was a common inscription on Christian graves.
2Pe 3:15
And account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. The apostle is referring to 2Pe 3:9. Scoffers count the delay of the judgment slackness; the Christian should count it salvation; it is for the salvation of the elect that the judgment tarrieth. It is almost certain that by “our Lord” here St. Peter means the Lord Jesus, whom he describes by the same title in 2Pe 3:18. Even as our beloved brother Paul also. The plural pronoun may be intended to imply that St. Paul was known to the Churches to which St. Peter was writing, and was beloved there. St. Peter addresses his readers as “beloved” four times in this Epistle; he here uses the same epithet of St. Paul. It comes naturally from his lips; but a writer of the second century would probably have used much stronger words of praise in speaking of one so much reverenced. According to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; rather, wrote to you (comp. Polycarp, ‘Ad Philipp.,’ Php 1:3, “One like me cannot equal the wisdom of the blessed Paul”). That wisdom was given mite him, as he himself says (1Co 3:10). If we ask to what Epistles of St. Paul is St. Peter referring, the passage which at once occurs to us is 1Th 4:1-18 and 1Th 5:1-28. This Epistle was probably known to St. Peter; there may be a reference to 1Th 5:2 in 1Th 5:10 of this chapter; and Silvanus, whose name St. Paul associates with his own in both Epistles to the Thessalonians, was with St. Peter when he wrote his First Epistle (1Pe 5:12). But St. Peter’s Second Epistle is addressed (primarily at least) to the same Churches to which the first was written (1Th 3:1). We must therefore either say, with Dean Alford, that “our Epistle belongs to a date when the Pauline Epistles were no longer the property only of the Churches to which they were written, but were dispersed through, and considered to belong to, the whole Christian Church;” or we must suppose that the passages in St. Peter’s thoughts were not in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, but in some of the Epistles addressed to the Churches of Asia Minor; as, for instance, Eph 1:4; Eph 2:8; Eph 3:9-11; Col 1:22; Col 3:4, Col 3:24; or, possibly Rom 2:4 and Rom 9:22, as there seem to be some reasons for believing that this last Epistle was addressed to the Church at Ephesus among others.
2Pe 3:16
As also in all his Epistles. The true reading is probably without the article. The words, therefore, do not imply the existence of a complete collection of St. Paul’s Epistles, but mean only “in all Epistles which he writes.” Speaking in them of these things; that is, of the day of God, the end of the world, etc. St. Peter was acquainted with other Epistles of St. Paul besides those addressed to the Asiatic Churches. There are evident indications of his knowledge of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, as well as of that to the Romans. In which are some things hard to be understood. The manuscripts vary between and . The first reading would refer to the words immediately preceding”these things;” “among the subjects on which St. Paul wrote there are some things,” etc. The second would refer to “all his Epistles,” and would mean that there are certain difficulties in St. Paul’s Epistles generally. St. Peter does not tell us what difficulties were in his thoughtswhether St. Paul’s teaching about “the man of sin,” and “the day of the Lord,” or his doctrine of justification by faith, and his assertion of Christian liberty, which might be perverted into anti-nomianism by such men as the false teachers censured in Rom 2:1-29. The word , “hard to be understood,” occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest; rather, the ignorant and unsteadfast. Both words are peculiar to this Epistle; the last occurs also in 2Pe 2:14, the first here only in the New Testament. The verb also translated “wrest” () is found only here; it means “to twist with a windlass,” and so “to strain, to torture, to distort.” As they do also the other Scriptures. This passage is of the greatest interest, as showing that some of St. Paul’s Epistles had by this time taken their place in the estimate of Christians by the side of the sacred books of the Old Testament, and were regarded as Holy Scripture. By “the other Scriptures” St. Peter means the Old Testament, and also, perhaps, some of the earlier writings of the New, as the first three Gospels and the Epistle of St. James. St. Paul, in 1Ti 5:18, quotes a passage which seems to come from Luk 10:7 as Scripture. Unto their own destruction; literally, their own destruction of themselves. The use of both adjective and pronoun intensifies the meaning (comp. Luk 2:1, Luk 2:12).
2Pe 3:17
Ye therefore, beloved, seeing that ye know these things before. The pronoun “ye” is emphatic; others have gone astray; “continue ye faithful.” The construction is participial, and there is no expressed object; literally, “knowing before,” i.e., that false teachers will arise. Beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness; rather, as in the Revised Version, lest, being carried away ye fall. It is interesting to notice that the word rendered “led or carried away” is used by St. Paul, in Gal 2:13, of St. Barnabas, who, along with St. Peter himself, was then “carried away” with the dissimulation of the Judaizers. The word rendered “wicked,” rather “lawless,” is used elsewhere in the New Testament only in Gal 2:7. The word for “steadfastness” () occurs only here.
2Pe 3:18
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Growth is necessary for steadfastness; we cannot persevere unless we continually advance in faith. Some, as Alford, take the genitive with “grace” as well as with “knowledge;” but this connection forces us to regard it first as subjective, then as objectivethe grace which Christ gives, and the knowledge of which he is the Objectand so seems somewhat forced. St. Peter insists on the knowledge of Christ as essential for growth in grace, at the beginning, as at the end, of this Epistle. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. We notice the doxology addressed to Christ; it reminds us of the hymn which Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan, says the Christians of Bithynia (one of the provinces mentioned in 1Pe 1:1) were wont to address to Christ as to God. To him be (or is) the gloryall the glory which belongs to God, which we ascribe to him. “For ever” is, literally, “for the day of the age or of eternity ( ).” This remarkable expression is found only here, and is variously interpreted. Bengel explains it as, “dies sine nocte, morus et perpetuus;” Huther as, “the day on which eternity begins as contrasted with time, but which day is likewise all eternity itself.” Fronmuller quotes St. Augustine: “It is only one day, but an everlasting day, without yesterday to precede it, and without tomorrow to follow it; not brought forth by the natural sun, which shall exist no more, but by Christ, the Sun of Righteousness.”
HOMILETICS
2Pe 3:1-10
The certainty of the Lord’s coming.
I. CONFUTATION OF SCOFFERS.
1. St. Peter’s purpose in writing, He took a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of the Christians of Asia Minor; he felt a great affection for them; he calls them “beloved” four times in this chapter. We do not know whether he had ever seen them face to face. It may be that Silvanus had made known to him their circumstances, their dangers, their temptations. So he writes to them. In the First Epistle he comforts them in the presence of great persecution; in the second he warns them against the seductions of false teachers. He is an example to Christian ministers of diligence, of affectionate care for souls. He writes:
(1) To stir up his readers. Their minds, he says, were pure. They were single-hearted Christians; their religion was genuine, sincere. Nevertheless, it was well to stir them up. We all need to be aroused from time to time. We live on in the same way day after day; the daily prayers, the daily life, are ordered according to rule; there is danger of becoming lukewarm, formal, of acting from habit rather than from the conscious desire of pleasing God. Hence the need of exhortation. We ask God to “stir up the wills of his faithful people.” It is he only who, by the power of his Spirit, can really arouse us; but he uses men as his instruments. He used the agency of St. Peter to stir up the minds of the Asiatic Christians.
(2) To remind them of the words of the prophets and apostles. He had urged the study of prophecy in the first chapter of this Epistle; he had dwelt upon the subject of prophetical inspiration in both Epistles; he was constantly referring to the prophets both in his speeches and letters. Christians ought to study the writings of the prophets; they ought to give heed to the Word of prophecy. So also they should be always mindful of the Lord’s commandment given through the apostles. “God who in times past spoke by the prophets, hath in the latter days spoken unto us by his Son.” The writings of prophets and apostles come from the same sourcethe inspiration of God; both have a message for us. It becomes us to be mindful of that message; to forget it is to be wanting in reverence and gratitude to him from whom the message comes. The commandment, delivered to us by the apostles, is in truth the commandment of our Lord and Saviour, who, as our Lord, has a right to our obedience, and, as our Saviour, has a claim upon our tenderest feelings of love and gratitude.
2. Scoffers will come. It has always been so; there have always been men who mocked at those who trusted in God. It was so with Lot in Sodom, with Isaac the heir of the promise, with the psalmist, with the Lord Jesus himself. Those of whom St. Peter speaks were men of sensual habits, walking after their own lusts. There is such a thing as honest doubt, like that of St. Thomas; there are men who would give the world to believe, if they could; their temperament, their education, their habits of thought, throw immense difficulties in their way; such men, we hope and trust, will be guided, sooner or later, to the truth. But in all ages a very large proportion of the prevalent skepticism has issued out of an ungodly life. Men have rejected the faith because they were unwilling to believe. The pure morality of the gospel offends the self-indulgent; it is a constant reproach to them; the teaching of Scripture concerning the judgment is repulsive to them; they try to keep such thoughts out of their minds. And, besides this, sin hardens the heart; a sensual life blinds the eye of the soul, and makes men incapable of appreciating spiritual truth. “The natural man [the , in whom the animal soul is predominant] receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1Co 2:14). Such men come with their mockery, saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? The fathers have fallen asleep; generation after generation has passed away. Christians have lived in expectation of the Lord’s coming according to his promise; they have waited for him, but he came not; they are in their graves. Are men still to pass their lives in waiting for an advent which seems to be continually receding? All things continue thus, as they are, and as they have been; the laws of nature work on in their changeless uniformity. Where is the promise?” These men took the Epicurean view of the Deity. God might have created the world; he might have called into being the forces which are working in the universe. But now, they thought, he leaves those forces to their mutual action and reaction upon one another; he does not interpose either in the natural world or in the affairs of men; he leaves all to the silent rule of law. The teaching of Holy Scripture is directly opposed to this form of agnosticism. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” said the Lord Jesus to the Jews. “In him we live, and move, and have our being,” said St. Paul to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, as well as to the men of Athens generally. God sustains the universe from day to day, from hour to hour, with his continued agency. Without his support the world would fall into ruin; without his providence the order of society would collapse. The laws of nature are but observed uniformities, sequences of cause and effect; they are not forces; they have no life, no power; they are the expression of the Divine will. God changeth not; and those laws which he has impressed upon the material universe exhibit the hand of the Creator, they too are changeless within the sphere of the all-controlling will of God. He can suspend their operation, for he is the Lord God omnipotent; but as a rule his working is uniform, continuous. If it were not so, the world would be a scene of disorderall its rare beauty would be lost, life in its present conditions could not be sustained, society would be impossible. That uniformity which is the result of the wisdom of God must not be made an argument against the providence of God. He works in the uniformities of the laws of nature as certainly as in disturbances of those uniformities. There have been such disturbances; the uniform course of nature has been broken by Divine interpositions on a great scale.
3. The answer to the scoffers. All things have not always continued as they are. For:
(1) Creation itself was the introduction of a vast change; it was a mighty interposition of Divine power. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” We are not concerned here with the scientific interpretation of phenomena. The Bible was not intended to teach us that knowledge which men may by patient labour obtain for themselves, but to reveal to us the relations between man and God, so far as those relations are within our comprehension, and to show us the duties which arise out of those relations. We are not told how many ages, or what processes of evolution, may have their place between the second and the third verses of the first chapter of Genesis. It is the great fact of creation which is forcibly declared in those emphatic words with which the first of the sacred books begins. “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” This is the great truth: “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” It was he who said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” The scoffers willfully forget this; even if they do not formally deny the possibility of creation, they shut their eyes to it, and forget that he who made the world can also destroy it, that the great change of creation may be preparatory for other changes as great in the future.
(2) One such catastrophe was the Deluge. The earth, which God had once pronounced to be “very good,” had become corrupt, and was filled with violence. Then God brought in the Flood upon the world of the ungodly. By his Word “were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth.” That awful visitation was a warning of coming judgments. All things did not go on in the same unvarying course as the scoffers said. When all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, then God interposed in his awful justice, and the earth was, by a baptism of water, restored and purified, prepared for a new beginning.
(3) All things will not always continue as they are. By God’s Word the heavens and the earth were made at the first; by his Word they are now maintained in being. But as the old world contained in itself the element which swept away the ungodly race of men, so the world that now is contains in itself the agent of its own destruction. It is stored with fire; there are stores of fire hidden within it, which are to work the last most awful change, which are to destroy the present order of things, and by their purifying and refining power to work, as by a baptism of fire, the regeneration of the universe into a new life. And it is stored up for fire, reserved unto the day of judgment, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire. That great day is presented to us in Holy Scripture as a day of terror with surroundings most awful and overwhelming. It will be a day of destruction to the ungodly; it will sweep them into utter deaththat death of the soul which is so much more dreadful than the death of the body, for it is death eternal, a state of separation from the life of God, separation from light and joy and love, felt in all its blank and utter misery. Then all things will not continue as they are; he who made the world at the first, he who interposed when that world had become corrupt, and swept away the wicked with the waters of the Flood,he will come again, but this time “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The mockers may mock; but the Word of God abideth; it must be fulfilledhe will surely come.
II. EXPLANATION OF THE DELAY OF THE JUDGMENT.
1. With the Eternal time is not. We think under the laws of time; time is an essential element in our thoughtwe cannot think without recognizing it. It is not so with God; the thought of God is not subject to the law of time. He is eternal; past, present, and future are all within the sphere of his immediate knowledge. To him one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. To him that inhabiteth eternity the longest time that human thought can conceive is but as a speck. Even we can understand that real life is measured not by mere time, but by action. How much of life was there concentrated in the three years of our Lord’s ministry, those years filled full with works of love and holy teaching! while, on the other hand, the seventy years or more of many men pass by in careless living, in listless idleness, without energy either of thought or action, without any good results either for themselves or for others. It is thought, love, action, that measures life, not the hand of the clock, not the mere lapse of hours and years. “He, being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time” (Wis. 4:13).
2. The Lord is long-suffering. The delay does not mean indifference; it does not mean that the Lord heedeth not the conduct of men. The ungodly say, “Tush, God hath forgotten: he hideth away his face; he will never see it.” But it is not so. The delay of the judgment comes from a far different reason. God is not willing that any should perish. Alas! men do perish in their sins; the day of judgment is the day of perdition of ungodly men. But it is not of God; it is of their own willfulness and obstinacy; they bring upon themselves swift perdition. God has bestowed on man the awful gift of power to choose good or evil; without that power there could be no moral action, no responsibility, no obedience, no holiness, no love; life without that power would be the working of a machine, not the energy of a creature made after the likeness of God. Man, alas! has too often abused that great and perilous gift, and has turned that which should have led to holiness into an occasion of sin; and “the wages of sin is death.” But God hath “no pleasure in the death of the wicked;” his desire is that “all should come to repentance.” Therefore he gives them time. “The goodness of God leadeth them to repentance” (Rom 2:4). We cannot enter into life without repentance, without a deep and real change of heart. “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” was the first sermon of John the Baptist, the first sermon of our Lord. “Repent, and be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins,” was the exhortation of St. Peter in his first great sermon. And God willeth that all should come to repentance; for “the Lord is loving unto every man;” and Jesus Christ our Lord “tasted death for every man.” And “there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” Therefore he gives us time. The delay comes from the long-suffering love of God. How sad that men should scoff at that which should be the ground of adoring gratitude!
3. But the day of the Lord will come. It must be so, for so it is decreed in the counsels of God. The mockers may mock in their mockery; they may ask in bitter sarcasm, “Where is the promise of his coming?” The Christian knows the answer; it is hidden in the secret purpose of God, in the mystic book sealed with seven seals, which none can open save the Lion of the tribe of Judah. But the day of the Lord will comethat we know, though we know not the time.
(1) Its coming is certain, sure as the Word of God; the Bible tells us it will come; our consciences bear witness also; the warning voice of conscience points forward to the coming of the awful day. And it will come suddenly, as the thief comethwhen men are not looking for it. Men will be living, as, alas! so many men are living now, heedlessly; eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, without a thought of God and the solemn future. Then, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, shall the sign of the Son of man be seen in heaven, and the archangel’s trump shall sound. “Therefore take ye heed,” saith the Lord, “lest that day come upon you unawares.”
(2) And its coming is terrible. St. Peter’s words bring vividly before our thoughts the awful scenethe crash of falling worlds, the roar of the destroying flames, the dissolution of the elements into chaos, the conflagration which shall burn up the earth and all that is therein. All the works that are therein, the palaces of kings, the fortifications of cities, the cathedrals and churches built for the worship of God,all shall be involved in that one tremendous ruin. This is the apostle’s answer to the scoffers.
LESSONS.
1. Scoffers will scoff; men of science will point to the unchanging laws of nature. Neither sarcasms nor the hypotheses of scientific men can shake the Christian from his faith.
2. Therefore we must stir up one another and ourselves; we must keep the solemn words of Holy Scripture in our memories.
3. God has intervened in his judgments; he will intervene again.
4. God is long-suffering; but there must be a limit even to that long-suffering patience. The day of judgment must come; therefore repent while there is time.
2Pe 3:11-18
Exhortations.
I. THE DUTY OF PREPARATION.
1. Christians should look for the city that hath foundations. The cities of this world have no sure foundation, for the earth on which they are built must pass away; it has within itself the element which is to cause its dissolution; the germs of that dissolution are working even now. Then wise men must not lay up for themselves treasures upon earth; they must not live as if this changeful, dying world was to be their home for ever; they must set their affections on things above; they must remember that Christian men are citizens of the heavenly country, fellow-citizens with the saints. Therefore they must adopt the modes of life which are characteristic of that heavenly country; their conduct as they move about among men must be holy in all the relations of life; they must live in the habitual pursuit of godliness in all its aspects. These things are of true, lasting moment. The prizes of this world, even those which seem to us the greatest and most to be desired, are but vanity, vanity of vanities, compared with the great realities of the spiritual life.
2. They must live in the expectation of the Lord’s coming. They must daily look for the presence of the great day, and by thus looking for it, and making ready for it, they must (St. Peter says, in the condescending language which Holy Scripture sometimes uses) hasten its coming. For that day cometh not till the chosen of God are safe. “Haste thee, escape thither,” said the destroying angel to Lot; “for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither.” So now “the lightnings of the judgment-day pause yet a while,” stored in the armoury of God (‘Christian Year: All Saints’ Day’), till God’s elect are numbered, till they are ready, not one of them lost, for their eternal home. Then there is a sense in which, very strange and awful though it may seem, Christians may hasten the coming of the day of God. When the bride hath made herself ready, when the work of repentance is wrought out in the hearts of God’s people, when they have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,then the day of God shall come. Now the long-suffering of God waiteth, as it waited in the days of Noah. It is a holy and a blessed truthhe waits for us in his tender mercy; he is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish; his wrath does not strike at once the sinner in his sin. He is waiting now, giving us time; but that gracious waiting cannot be protracted for ever; the day of the Lord will come. It is our duty to do what lieth in us to hasten its coming, by the preparation of our own hearts, by stirring up others to repentance, and by our prayers. “Thy kingdom come,” is our daily prayer, the prayer which the Lord himself puts into our mouths. “The kingdom of God” has more senses than one in Holy Scripture; but certainly one thing to which the Lord directs our prayers in those words is the coming of the day of God, when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. This is to be our daily prayer; if we use it in thoughtful faith, it will fix our hearts upon our eternal home. The Church on earth prays, “Thy kingdom come;” in Paradise the souls under the altar cry with a loud voice, “How long, O Lord, holy and true?” (Rev 6:9, Rev 6:10). He will hear the prayer that goeth up to him day and night; he will avenge his own elect; the great day must come.
3. That day will be a day of terrors. Because of its presence the visible heavens will be on fire; they shall be dissolved. The earth and the heaven, in the vision of judgment that was revealed to St. John, fled away from the face of him who sat on the great white throne, and there was found no place for them. St. Peter, too, saw the awful scene presented to the eye of his mindhe uses the prophetic presentthe elements are melting, wasting away, with fervent heat. Those startling words suggest thoughts of exceeding awe and terror: “Take ye heed; watch and pray.”
4. But there will be a new home for the righteous. St. John heard the voice of him that sat on the throne saying, “Behold, I make all things new.” God had promised this long ago by the mouth of his prophet Isaiah. He will surely fulfill his word. He will not leave his people desolate and homeless. He provided a city of refuge for Lot, when his old abode was destroyed by the fire of the wrath of God. So, out of the appalling conflagration of the dreadful day there will arise a new and blessed home for his elect. We look for new heavens and a new earth; and they shall abide for ever. As once the promise came to Noah that there should not be any more a flood to destroy the earth, so God hath promised that “the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord.” Heaven and earth shall then be very near, the one to the other; for the holy city, new Jerusalem, shall come down from God out of heaven; and the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and he will dwell with them. The commonwealth that is in heaven shall be established (so Holy Scripture seems to teach us) upon the new earth. It shall come down from heaven, having the glory of God; the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; there his servants shall serve him. Heaven will come down to earth; and so the new earth will become a part of heaven, very closely joined with heaven. God will dwell there with men, and they shall see him face to face, and live in that new earth the life of heaven; for it is the unveiled presence of God which makes heaven what it is, the abode of joy, and love, and holiness, and entranced contemplation of the Divine beauty. Into that city entereth nothing that defileth; righteousness dwelleth there. The earth that now is hath been defiled with many sins; it has been stained with blood, devastated by war and cruelty, polluted with sensuality and uncleanness. But the new earth shall be all holy. The refining fires of judgment will work a complete and everlasting change. The Deluge cleansed the old world, but only for a time; sin soon began to reassert itself. The fires of the great day will purely purge away all the dross, and leave only the refined gold. Righteousness shall dwell for ever in that new earth. The people of the holy city shall be all righteous; for they shall abide in the presence of him who is the Sun of Righteousness, and shall be made like unto him, for they shall see him as he is.
5. The need of earnest diligence. St. Peter has been warning us of the solemn future which lies before usthe most tremendous judgment, the destruction of the present order of things in the fires of the last day, the new heavens and the new earth which will be the eternal home of the blessed. These thoughts, he says, enforce upon us the necessity of diligence in the religious life. Men who really believe that after death cometh the judgment cannot live listlessly and idly. Many professing Christians, alas! live careless lives; but that carelessness evinces a practical unbelief. The momentous issues of the great day must stir the believer to earnest effort. St. Peter had urged the necessity of diligence in the first chapter; he urges it again in the last. Then he appealed to the grace of God, his gifts, his promises; the love of God, the blessed hope set before us, ought to arouse us to love and zeal. Now he appeals to the awful future, the judgment that is coming. Carelessness in the prospect of the judgment is nothing short of madness. Those whose faith is real must be diligent. “That day cometh as a thief:” how will it find us? What will be the state of those who are surprised in sin? Our hearts sicken in shuddering dread at the fearful thought. Then let us give diligence to make our calling and election sure. God’s elect must be conformed to the image of his Son. His Son, the holy Lamb of God, was without blemish and without spot; so must his servants be. They must wash their robes, and make them white in the blood of the Lamb. “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin;” but it cleanseth only those who “walk in the light.” Therefore let us be diligent to walk always in the consciousness of God’s presence, in the light that streams from the cross. That light will show each spot and blemish that rests upon the soul; it will bring us to repentance and confession; and then God “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Those who “follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth” are without fault before the throne of God (Rev 14:5), for every fault has been washed away in the precious blood. Their sins once were like crimson, but now they are whiter than snow; they are clothed with the wedding garment, the white robe of righteousness; therefore they are found in peace. Christ is their Peace; he bath made peace through the blood of his cross. Those who abide in Christ have peace with God now, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment. Such men account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. They know that life is a sacred trust, that the time of probation is precious; and they will strive by God’s gracious help to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that the night cometh, in which no man can work.
II. THE DUTY OF LISTENING TO THE WARNINGS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE,
1. St. Paul had warned them. St. Paul had, by himself or by his companions, founded most of the Churches of Asia Minor. He had written Epistles to the Galatians, Colossians, and Ephesians, the last being probably a circular letter intended to be read in several Churches. At the date of St. Peter’s Second Epistle many of St. Paul’s writings must have become the common property of the whole Church, and thus the Christians of Asia Minor probably knew and read some of the Epistles which had been addressed to European Churches. St. Peter calls St. Paul his beloved brother; he recognizes the wisdom which had been given unto him. The two holy apostles had once differed from one another; now they were united in one faith and one love. St. Peter had overcome his old impetuosity, his old desire to be first; he had learned that precious grace of humility, which in his First Epistle he so earnestly inculcates. He does not remember that he had once been reproved by St. Paul; he thinks only of St. Paul’s holiness and inspired wisdom; he is wholly above petty jealousies and resentments. Christians ought never to take offence, especially at well-intentioned rebukes; they ought to be thankful for them. Christians ought to rejoice at the graces vouchsafed to othersat their zeal, energy, love, at the success of their religious efforts. Envy, especially among Christians, is a hateful vice, a deadly sin. St. Peter, the first of the apostles, appeals to St. Paul, who was called last of all; he is an example of Christian humility. The two holy apostles taught the same great truths. St. Paul and St. Peter both press earnestly upon us the great danger of spiritual sloth; both warn us that the day of the Lord cometh suddenly, like a thief; both urge us to be watchful. Let us listen to those two holy men as they echo the solemn teaching of the great Master.
2. There are difficulties in St. Paul’s writings. Men misrepresented the great apostle even from the beginning; they represented him as teaching, “Let us do evil, that good may come” (Rom 3:8). They distorted his doctrine of justification, and perverted it into antinomianism; though he himself had taught that the faith by which we are saved is “faith which worketh by love,” and that faith which could remove mountains is nothing if it be alone, without charity. The false teachers, against whom St. Peter has been warning his readers, were probably among these perverters of the apostle’s meaning. It is no wonder: “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” There will always be in the visible Church men unlearned and unstable, untaught by the Holy Spirit of God who alone can guide us to the truth, and therefore without steadfastness, carried away with every blast of vain doctrine. Such men wrest to their own destruction, not only the “things hard to be understood” in St. Paul’s Epistles, but Holy Scripture generally. For it is not the written Word that in the fullest sense saves the soul, but the Word of life, the Word that is living and powerful, the Lord Jesus Christ himself manifested to the believer. We may find him in the thoughtful, devout study of God’s holy Word; but to find Christ, to win Christ, we must count all else as loss; we must forsake selfish aims, self-exaltation, self-indulgence, and follow in humility and earnest prayer the leading of the blessed Spirit. The written Word is a most precious gift; but no outward privilege can save us. Nay, awful as it seems, men may wrest it, and do wrest it, to their own destruction. Receive it in simplicity and faith, and it will save the soul. God reveals its deep holy meaning to babes in Christ. But if men with perverse ingenuity will use it as the weapon of party strife, and twist its sacred words to suit their selfish purposes, then it mayalas! that it should be soincrease their condemnation. “The letter killeth.” Corruptio optimi pessima.
3. There is need of thoughtful watchfulness. False teachers distort the meaning of Holy Scripture; they wander far from the truth; they are self-willed, lawless, disobedient to the Law of God written in the heart, revealed in his Word. Therefore Christians must be on their guard; they must “not believe every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they be of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” This conflict of opinions sometimes produces painful doubts and uncertainties; it is one of the trials of the Christian life.
4. And of growth in grace. God will reveal the truth to the babes in Christ. He will not leave the humble, faithful soul in darkness and perplexity. Only let a man earnestly pray for the grace of God; only let him strive daily to draw nearer to Christ, and to gain that inner knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, in comparison with which all things else are dross; and the light of the presence of Christ will surely dawn upon him, and in that light he will find a Guide to bring him to eternal life. For his is the glory now and to the day of eternity, and he is “able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by him.”
LESSONS.
1. “The fashion of this world passeth away.” What country shall we belong to?this dying world, or the eternal city?
2. The great day is at hand; we must look forward to it. We must prepare the way of the Lord; we must pray, “Thy kingdom come.”
3. In the new earth righteousness dwelleth. Let us follow after righteousness; let us be diligent, “that we may be found in peace, blameless in his sight.”
4. Let us study the Scriptures in faith and prayer, that we may grow in grace.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
2Pe 3:4
“The promise of his coming.”
The principle which actuated these scoffers, leading them to irreligion and self-indulgence upon the ground that the promises and threats professing to emanate from Divine authority were unfulfilled, is the same principle which was embodied in the ancient proverb, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” It must be remembered that what is a promise to the loyal subject is a threat to the rebel. The second coming of Christ will be for the salvation of the righteous, but for the confusion of the impenitent offender.
I. THE MEANING OF THE PROMISE.
1. This is definite enough in itself, and has been and is firmly held by the whole Church. A sincere belief in the first advent of the Son of God leads to a belief in his second advent, as plainly foretold both by our Lord and by his apostles.
2. But, though definite in itself, the promise of Christ’s second coming is by no means definite in circumstances or in time. This is apparent from the diversity of view prevailing upon these points in many periods of the Church’s history. How and when Christ shall come are matters of secondary interest as compared with the fact that he shall come.
II. THE GIVER OF Tile PROMISE. The value of any promise depends upon the character of him by whom it is given, and not upon his character only, but also upon his ability and resources. Now, the promise in question has been given by a Promiser who is in the highest degree faithful and powerful, even by him who is eternal and unfailing Truth. The voice has been that of the Son, of the inspired prophets and apostles; but the counsel declared has been the counsel of the all-wise God.
III. THE DELAY IN THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROMISE. No doubt there has been a constant coming of the Lord Christ by his Spirit, both in judgment and rebuke, and also in mercy and deliverance. Yet the coming is still in the future. If the primitive Christians were in some instances impatient because their glowing hopes were not fulfilled, what wonder if, now and againas for example in times of depression and in times of persecutionthe hearts of the faithful have called for the appearance of the Redeemer, in fervent prayer, in ardent song! Can we be surprised if it has sometimes been lost sight of, that “with God one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”?
IV. THE ABUSE OF THIS DELAY BY MOCKERS AND SCOFFERS. From the first such persons have asked,” Where is the promise?” Unbelief has taken the form of ridicule. And, even worse, the fear of judgment has been to some extent cast off. Like the servants who, finding that their lord delayed his coming, began to eat, drink, and be drunken, and to abuse their fellow-servants, so the scoffers have flung aside every restraint, have spurned every check, and have abandoned themselves to the indulgence of their carnal lusts.
V. THE POWER AND INSPIRATION OF THE PROMISE. That which to one is the occasion of scoffing is to another the inducement to every Christian virtue. Faith rests upon the first advent; Hope stretches forth her hands towards the second advent. There may be mentioned among the fruits of this blessed promise:
1. Patient endurance of privations and sufferings which are known to be temporary.
2. Faithful fulfillment of the appointed stewardship, in preparation for the approaching account.
3. Quiet disregard of all the scoffs and mockeries of unbelievers – J.R.T.
2Pe 3:8
The Eternal’s independence of time.
In all likelihood this sublime statement was suggested by the language of the ninetieth psalm, “A thousand years in thy sight are as yesterday when it is past.” It is a glorious conception of the Divine greatness which is in this passage brought before our minds; whilst at the same time it has a practical bearing of a most valuable character upon the conduct of human life.
I. THE GREAT TRUTH ASSERTED. Time is for man, not for God. We human beings have but a few years allotted to us as the period of earthly work; within the scant limits of those years we must do what we have power to do, or we must leave it for ever undone. This is not so with the Eternal He has the vast range of all human history in which to carry out his designs. The dispensations follow one another with no haste. The ages are the province within which God works.
II. THE APPLICATION OF THIS TRUTH TO IMPENITENT SINNERS. It cannot be otherwise than that those who defy God’s authority should be affected by the deliberation with which the Almighty Ruler conducts his government.
1. Judgment deferred is made an excuse for perseverance in sin. If the Divine King were under the same restrictions as to time by which an earthly ruler is governed, the case would be otherwise. As it is, the withholding of retribution is misconceived. Yet judgment deferred is, in truth, not judgment reversed, but judgment delayed.
2. If the matter be regarded from the Divine side, another lesson comes to light. Judgment delayed is an opportunity for repentance. Long-suffering on God’s part has this merciful significance. Time may teach when other instructors are disregarded; forbearance may be fruitful even when threatening is barren.
III. THE APPLICATION OF THIS TRUTH TO THE TRIED AND TEMPTED PEOPLE OF GOD. Sometimes deliverance deferred is made a ground for fear that deliverance may never come. But the Christian is appointed to learn that deliverance deferred is only deliverance delayed. The day of disappointment, of persecution, of seeming desertion, may appear to the afflicted like a year; the year may appear to be an age. But if the matter be regarded from the Divine sideas our text invites us to regard itwhat a change comes over it! The distinction between a longer and a shorter period now almost vanishes. “What of the night? The morning cometh; and also the night.” The rescue is near; the daybreak has already begun. Interposition is to be measured, not by years or by centuries, but by Divine purposes and promises.
APPLICATION. These considerations should check the arrogance of scoffers and unbelievers; and should sustain the faith, the courage, and the hope of the Church militant – J.R.T.
2Pe 3:13
The abode of righteousness.
If the catastrophe which the apostle describes in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth verses stood alone, it might well fill the mind of the believing reader with foreboding and with awe, and paralyze all his energies. But the inspired writer looks beyond the scenes of dissolution and destruction to the fair and beautiful visions which become clear to the eye of faith when enlightened with a heavenly ray.
I. THE SUBSTANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN‘S EXPECTATIONS. Science sometimes foretells with some definiteness the future of the material universe, that is, so far as dissolution is concerned. According to a universal law of rhythmso we are toldthis earth shall be dissipated into atoms. But little is said upon scientific grounds of any process of reconstruction. Now, it is admitted that Scripture goes into no details with regard to the future. But, at the same time, whilst admitting the perishableness of all created things, revelation passes beyond the epoch of destruction, and assures us that what seems the end is not the end of all things. The old will certainly decay, but only to give place to the new. How this reconstitution is to be effected, we know not; yet that it shall be brought to pass is assured in the promise of “new heavens and a new earth.”
II. THE MORAL CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN‘S EXPECTATION, If there is vagueness as to what is material, nothing could be more explicit than so much of the revelation as relates to the spiritual. It matters very little what are the visible and tangible accompaniments of a future state, if only its ethical character be satisfactorily determined. And this is done in the language, “wherein dwelleth righteousness.” In such a revelation as this the judgment and conscience can peacefully rest. The contrast between the prevalence of unrighteousness on this earth, and the reign of righteousness in the reconstructed world, is striking in itself, and it furnishes a true satisfaction to the mind which by reason alone cannot confidently anticipate a change so blessed.
III. THE DIVINE BASIS OF THE CHRISTIAN‘S EXPECTATION. This is no surmise of sagacity; it is no poetic dream. Our anticipation is “according to God’s promise.” Here is the all-sufficient justification. Building upon the assurances of him who cannot lie, we secure a firm foundation for our faith and hope. We know that what he has promised he is able to perform. In the region in question all created might is powerless; if the result is to be brought to pass, it must be by the exercise of omnipotence itself.
IV. THE PREPARATION FOR THE FULFILMENT or THE CHRISTIAN‘S EXPECTATION. If we “look for” such a glorious future as these words suggest, our attitude must be other than mere hope. We shall cherish fortitude amidst ills that must soon pass away; we shall cultivate that habit of righteousness which shall be congenial to the state which we anticipate; and we shall seek that harmony with the Divine will that shall make us truly and for ever at home in every world of God – J.R.T.
2Pe 3:14
Diligence.
Where our versions say, “Be diligent! ‘ or “Give diligence!” the original says, “Hasten!” Yet our word, implying choice, value, love, seems appropriate as a rendering of the Greek. Let the traveler speed him with diligence on his journey; let the ploughman hasten to furrow all the acres of his field; let the sailor diligently take advantage of every favourable wind, and beat to windward when need be, that he may reach the haven where he fain would be. And let the Christian, in like manner, be diligent in his Christian calling, ministry, and life.
I. THE SPHERE OF CHRISTIAN DILIGENCE.
1. Properly considered, this includes the whole life. There is no department of our lawful activity where negligence, remissness, indolence, are allowable. The boy in his school-work, the woman in her household, the man in his profession,all are called to diligence.
2. Diligence is especially important in the achievement of Christian character. E.g., in the study of God’s Word, in meditation upon Christ’s gospel, in imitating Christ’s example, in the use of all the means of grace. It is thus that we hope to realize the noble aim before us, to reach the stature of the perfect man in Christ. Such an aim can only be achieved by assiduity and perseverance.
3. Diligence should distinguish the efforts put forth to promote the welfare of our fellow-men. In all walks of Christian philanthropy and usefulness there is a loud call for something better than a languid interest or a fitful zeal.
II. THE METHODS OF CHRISTIAN DILIGENCE. Good things are worth seeking, and for the most part are not to be had without seeking. The following may be acted upon as rules justified by practical experience.
1. Study the biographies of zealous, successful, useful servants of God.
2. Ponder the searching and stirring maxims of the wiseespecially those recorded in the Book of Proverbs.
3. Form seriously and deliberately, good resolutions for the conduct of life.
4. Pray, especially against the besetting sin (if such it be) of sloth.
5. And with prayer conjoin watchfulness, lest constantly recurring temptation to indolence prevail.
III. THE MOTIVES TO CHRISTIAN DILIGENCE.
1. Foremost among these must be placed the influence of Christ’s love. What can be a stronger impulse in the mind of a true friend of Jesus than a clear understanding of the Saviour’s sacrifice, and a warm response of affection and gratitude evoked by the love, pity, and self-denial of Immanuel? How can a friend of Jesus stand beneath his Master’s cross, listen to his Master’s dying groan, and then be indifferent and remiss in doing that Master’s will?
2. The wish to resemble Christ will lead to diligence in the service of God. When we remember those words which revealed our Saviour’s consecration, “I must work the works of him that sent me;” “How am I straitened until it [the baptism] be accomplished?” when we remember that it is recorded of him that he “had no leisure so much as to eat;”how can we remain or become supine in the fulfillment of our life-mission?
“Our Master all the work hath done
He asks of us to-day;
Sharing his service, every one
Share too his Sonship may.”
3. Be diligent in preparation for Christ’s return. He will require an account from every one of his servantsthe trustees of his precious gifts. Then shall the diligent, the faithful, be rewarded, and have praise of God. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”J.R.T.
2Pe 3:15
Divine long-suffering.
When the religion of Christ was first promulgated, there was on the part of many who embraced it an impatience with the state of things in the world, and an expectation of the end of the age and of the speedy return of the Saviour, for the deliverance of his people and the destruction of his foes. Both Paul and Peter found it necessary to restrain the impatience and to check the enthusiastic anticipations of their converts, and to impress upon them the marvelous forbearance of God. They aimed at showing that it was benevolence which chiefly prompted the manifestation of Divine long-suffering.
I. THE NATURE OF DIVINE LONG–SUFFERING. We know something of human patience and forbearance, and we have all been again and again indebted to these qualities for our opportunities of happiness and usefulness, But Divine long-suffering transcends all that has been displayed by men.
1. Long-suffering is different from mere goodness and bounty, i.e. the disposition to bestow benefits upon the needy and dependent.
2. And from pity or compassion, which is a sentiment of commiseration towards the wretched and helpless.
3. And at the same time it is, on the other hand, different from indifference to the evil conduct which is observed in men.
4. It is a kind of mercy. It involves a holy Superior and an offending subject. It is an emotion of the heart which prompts to the restraint of indignation; a principle of action which averts and withholds wrath and penalty, although these be abundantly deserved. God, in the exercise of long-suffering, beat’s with the sinners whom he might justly doom, gives further opportunity for repentance, and waits for its signs.
II. THE OCCASION FOR DIVINE LONG–SUFFERING.
1. The sins of mankind have given occasion for the exercise of this grace upon the vastest scale. Scripture history abounds with instances of God’s forbearance; e.g., in the time of Noah; when Israel rebelled in the wilderness; and when Israel afterwards so largely apostatized, etc. So has it been in the history of every nation, and in the history of the human race.
2. The sins of individual unbelievers and transgressors call for the forbearance of a gracious God. The young who live viciously and irreligiously, those in afterlife who forget God and give themselves to the pursuit of worldly aims, continue to live and to enjoy privileges only through the forbearance of Heaven.
3. The unfaithfulness of Christians is only tolerated by a long-suffering Lord. How otherwise could the frailties and infirmities which disfigure the religious life of multitudes be endured? If our God had not again and again borne with our imperfections, should we be still in the possession of opportunities and advantages so many and valuable?
III. THE MANIFESTATIONS OF DIVINE LONG–SUFFERING.
1. God refrains from judgment and condemnation.
2. God addresses faithful warnings, and summons to repentance as the clouds gather before the thunderstorm breaks. Expostulations are repeated: “How shall I give thee up?”
3. Promises and invitations are renewed.
4. Probation is extended, in order that further opportunity may be given for repentance. The mandate goes forth concerning the barren tree, “Let it alone this year also!”
IV. THE GRACIOUS INTENTION OF DIVINE LONG–SUFFERING. When the apostle writes, “is salvation,” he means, “is intended to work salvation.” God does not prolong our proving with a view to the increase of our guilt and chastisement, but for a purpose exactly opposed to thisin order, that is, that hardness may be melted down, that rebellion may cease and be followed by loyalty, that neglect and disregard of religion may give place to interest and to prayer, that the sinner may repent, the wanderer return, the careless be revived. The gift of Christ to man is the most glorious evidence of Divine long-suffering. This is a dispensation of mercy. To forbearance we owe our privileges, and to forbearance we shall be indebted for our final and everlasting salvation.
Great, indeed, is the guilt of those who despise and abuse the long-suffering of the Lord. Such there have ever been. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” But it is better that delay in judgment should be used as the opportunity of repentance, rather than that it should be abused as an excuse and an inducement for perseverance in sin – J.R.T.
2Pe 3:18
Growth.
The Apostle Paul is recorded to have enjoined his converts to “continue in the grace of God.” And this is necessary to the Christian life, but it is not all that is necessary. To abide is not to be stationary. The Apostle Peter here instructs us that it is required of Christians that they not only continue in grace, but grow in grace.
I. THE DIVINE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH. It is well that the tree be planted in a rich and suitable soil; that there be room for its roots to strike forth as far as the most spreading of its goodly boughs; that it be by rivers of water, through whoso moisture it may be green; that the winds of heaven may freely rustle through its leafage, and may swing its lithe young branches to and fro. But to what end does the tree possess these advantages? Not that it may remain a tender sapling, not that having grown for a while it may be pollarded, or its growth so checked that it may remain a stunted deformity; but rather that, through all the rough yet kindly forces of nature, the tree may wax greater and stronger year by year; that its heart may be sound, its sap full flowing every spring; that it may “hang all its leafy banners out;” that its branches may give homes to the birds of the air, and shade to the beasts of the field; that its outline may be beautiful to the eye, and its fruit grateful to the taste. So is it the intention of God, and the duty of the Christian, that there should be spiritual growth. It is for those who dwell in the land of privilege, who enjoy the care of the heavenly Husbandman, upon whom are shed the soft influences of heaven, to profit by this fostering culture and these genial powers, to make constant and unmistakable progress in those graces which are the strength and beauty of the Christian life.
II. THE RESPECTS IN WHICH GROWTH IS TO TAKE PLACE. “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow like the cedar in Lebanon.” “Israel shall grow as the lilies.” In such declarations the reference is evidently to spiritual progress.
1. In the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. By this expression we are to understand the grace of Christ as revealed, bestowed, and experienced. The grace in us is to be over against, in correspondence with, the grace which is in him. Christian character and excellences are the sign and the effect of spiritual participation in the favour of our Lord.
(1) In the number of Christian graces. These are enumerated in the first chapter of this Epistle. Let every reader ask himselfAm I possessed of the graces thus catalogued? or am I not painfully lacking in some one or more? Now, tile possession of one does not compensate the lack of another. There is room for supplying many deficiencies.
(2) In the strength of Christian graces. In degree every virtue is capable of development; and it is by exercise that the desired increase is to be attained. He who gives play and scope to his holy emotions shall find that they become purer and quicker. If righteous purposes and endeavours have room to act, they will gain in vigour and effectiveness.
(3) In the harmony of Christian graces. Symmetry of character is essential to moral perfection, as is physical symmetry to the perfection of bodily figure and features. Harmonious as well as vigorous development of the renewed nature should be the aim of all whose desire is to please God. Instances abound in which the possession of one excellence is presumed to compensate the absence of others. But to be bluntly honest and uncourteous, or to be discreet and untender; to be amiable but unable to resist evil influence,is spiritual deformity. Whilst perfection is to be found in God alone, each follower of Christ aspires to grow up in all things unto him who is the Head. “Ye are complete in him.” The tree which has been hindered from growing on one side fails in symmetry; it is the same with the disciple of Christ who has evidently failed in learning some of the Master’s most essential lessons.
2. In the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul prayed, on behalf of the Colossians, that they might increase in the knowledge of God. And our Lord himself deemed this knowledge so important that he made it a petition of his great intercessory prayer that his disciples might “know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he had sent.” Now, all human knowledge is susceptible of increase; and the Lord and Saviour in whom we trust is a theme, an object of knowledge, so vast as to be inexhaustible.
III. THE MEANS BY WHICH GROWTH IN GRACE IS ACHIEVED. As the plant needs soil, air, light, culture, in order that it may grow, as the body needs food and many and varied necessaries in order that the child may develop into the man, so are there conditions indispensable to spiritual progress. There it is for all who desire to advance in the Divine life, to discover and to use. The study of God’s Word, the diligent attendance upon Church ordinances, constancy in prayer, faithfulness in work,these are acknowledged “means of grace.” The reading of biographies of great, good, and useful men may be mentioned as a subsidiary but valuable means to spiritual progress. And at the same time, it is important to observe and to avoid and strive against those hindrances to growth which in great variety beset us on every side, and by which very many have been injured, if not ruined.
IV. THE EXTENT AND LIMIT OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. With regard to this world, such progress is intended to be lifelong. If growth be constant, it cannot matter to us at what precise stage of advance the earthly development comes to a close. Let death come when it may to the Christian who is making progress in Divine grace and knowledge, it cannot come inopportunely.
“It is not growing, like a tree,
In bulk, doth make man better be,
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere;
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.”
Beyond this life, who can set a limit to such growth as is here inculcated? The scope is boundless and the opportunity is infinite – J.R.T.
HOMILIES BY U.R. THOMAS
2Pe 3:1-9
The Divine commandment.
A careful study of this passage is necessary to a clear understanding of the apostle’s meaning, and of the place of this urgent exhortation in his argument. For such a study it may be welt to gather up his teaching here round three points.
I. THE “WORD” OR “COMMANDMENT” HERE INTENDED. Concerning such we ask:
1. By whom is it proclaimed?
(1) “Spoken before by the holy prophets;” i.e., perhaps chiefly, though not solely, of the Old Testament. Forth-tellers as well as fore-tellers.
(2) “Your apostles;” i.e., those that brought you the gospel.
(3) “The Lord and Saviour.” He is the Source; the prophets and apostles are but the channel.
2. How is it to be received?
(1) “Stir up your mind;” active intelligence.
(2) “Sincere” mind; unprejudiced intelligence.
(3) By way of “remembrance;” intelligence that recalls what has been revealed. Not a novelty, not a discovery.
3. What is it? The theme of both EpistlesChrist’s coming.
II. THE OBJECTION OF MEN TO THIS “WORD” AND “COMMANDMENT.”
1. What are the men who object? “Mockers with mockery.” Not the troubled truth-seeker.
2. What is the spirit in which they object? “Walking after their own lusts.” Strong unbridled desire is the explanation of their scornful unbelief.
3. What is the argument of this objection? “Where is the promise of his coming?” Not, where written? but, what has come of it? Since the fathers fell asleep it seems to lie like a dead letter.
III. THE THREEFOLD ANSWER TO THIS OBJECTION.
1. It arises from willful ignorance of history. There is the “Flood”probably one among many, but the chiefof which tradition, science, the Bible, have much to say. And that Flood, and all coming destruction, is to be traced, not to a fortuitous concourse of atoms, but to “the Word of God.”
2. It arises from fixing time as a condition of God’s ways, as it is of man’s. “One day,” etc. Look at “the dial of the ages, not the horologe of time.”
3. It arises from misreading the apparent tardiness of God. He is slow, but never late. What seems to us delay is not an interval of Divine neglect, but a period of Divine mercy, granting an opportunity for human “repentance.”U.R.T.
2Pe 3:10-13
Destiny and duty.
This passage is woven to the preceding by a link so clear and close that there is no need for indicating it. But we proceed to notice
I. THE CERTAINTY AND YET THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE PASSING AWAY OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF THINGS.
1. What will “pass away”? “Heavens;” i.e., firmament. “Elements;” not the forces we usually so name, because they include “fire,” which is here the revolutionary force; but, according to Farrar and others, “the orbs of heaven.”
2. How shall they “pass away”? “Dissolved,” not destroyed. Fresh forms. Whether this be literal, as with the Flood, or wider and figurative, so as to include institutions, empires, and all that “the world” is to us, is an open question.
3. The certainty of all passing away. The fact is certain.
4. The uncertainty. The date is uncertain. “As a thief;” not as to wrongfulness, but unexpectedness. “At such an hour as ye think not is the true answer to all chronological theories about “the end.”
II. THE GLORY OF THE FUTURE AFTER THAT STUPENDOUS EVENT HAS HAPPENED. It is not the catastrophe, or climax, but the prologue and dawn. It leads not to annihilation, but restoration and purification.
1. A new system of things. “New heavens and new earth.” Fresh, in contrast to worn out. Scars and wounds all gone.
2. The true principle dominant in the new system” righteousness.” Probably not more material grandeur or loveliness than now, but pervaded with rectitudeman right with God, man right with man, man right with himself.
3. The permanence of this pervasive righteousness. Wherein “dwelleth.” Not, as now and here, often an alien, frequently a stronger, at best a visitor; but the new system of things will be its home. That is
(1) its fitting,
(2) its happy,
(3) its permanent abode.
4. All this rests on a Divine “promise.” This indicates
(1) God’s pity;
(2) God’s prescience;
(3) God’s power.
The tones of this promise are manifold and harmonious, from Jonah down to Peter – U.R.T.
2Pe 3:14-18
A tender concluding appeal.
In these words the apostle gets near, as a shepherd of souls tending the flock, to those whom he would bless.
I. lie MAKES THEIR DISCIPLINE A PLEA FOR REACHING A BLESSED IDEAL.
1. Their discipline. How much is involved in “these things”?
2. Their ideal. “Be found in peace, without spot, and blameless.”
3. Their struggle. “Give diligence.”
II. HE INDICATES THAT THE MYSTERY OF DELAYED JUDGMENT IS A MYSTERY OF DIVINE MERCY GIVING OPPORTUNITY FOR SALVATION.
1. This is taught by Paul.
2. This is affirmed again by Peter.
3. This is the clear teaching of Scripture, even though it has its things “hard to be understood.”
III. HE WARNS THAT EVEN THE BEST MEANS OF BLESSING MAY BE PERVERTED TO HARM. The ignorant and unsteadfast wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction.
IV. HE SHOWS THE PERIL THAT COMES TO THE GOOD FROM EVIL MEN. “Carried away with the error of the wicked,” etc.
1. Strong influence”carried.”
2. Great calamity”fail.”
V. HE PROCLAIMS THE METHOD AND HOPE OF TRUE SAFETY. “Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.” This is in harmony with his emphatic teaching: “Add to your faith virtue,” etc.
VI. HE ASCRIBES PRAISE TO HIM WHO IS ITS RIGHTFUL OBJECT.
1. The glory is Christ’s. “On his head are many crowns.” Peter vies with Paul in passionate homage for his Lord.
2. The glory is Christ’s now. Our obedience, our actual service, our praise, today.
3. The glory is Christ’s for ever. There may be new systems of things, and these systems of surpassing grandeur; but his glory shall ever be the diadem on the very brow of the universe, the central sun amid all its constellations. For the moral evermore transcends the material. And he is for ever “the Lord our Righteousness.”U.R.T.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON
2Pe 3:1-10
Fact of second coming, especially in its accompaniments.
I. AIM OF THE EPISTLE.
1. To stir them up by reminding them. “This is now, beloved, the second Epistle that I write unto you; and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance.” There is here the first of four designations of them as beloved in this chapter. It was already a second Epistle that he was writing to the same circle; not much time had elapsed since the writing of the First Epistle, which in all probability is that which has come down to us under that title. The aim of both Epistles was the same. It is expressed in accordance with language used in the first chapter of this Epistle. lie did not profess to be revealing to them new truths, but only to put them in remembrance of old truths. They had a sincere mind, i.e., open to the light. They would not therefore object to truths because they were old, or to their being re-stated, but would rather welcome being reminded of them, that they might be stirred up to a deeper sense of their importance.
2. To stir them up by reminding them of certain holy words. “That ye should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles.” He first refers them to the words of the holy prophets, i.e., who wrote on holy themes, and under holy inspiration. He has specially in view the holy theme of the second coming. Their words spoken before had received striking, yet partial, fulfillment in the first coming; they would receive their complete fulfillment in the second coming. He also refers them to the commandment of the Lord and Saviour, than which surely nothing could be more binding. Christ first saves, and then commands: where is the teacher who is in that commanding position? He first teaches the fact of his second coming, and then he commands the corresponding life. “Watch therefore,” says Christ: “for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken through. Therefore be ye also ready: for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh.” This commandment, having the highest authority, was delivered to them through their apostles, i.e., the apostles that had laboured among them. The chief of these thus echoed his Lord. “The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night: so then let us not sleep, as do the rest, but let us watch and be sober” (1Th 5:2-7).
II. THE MOCKERS.
1. The time of their appearance. “Knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery.” Peter refers to the advent of the mockers as of primary importance in its bearings. They were to come in the last of the days, by which we cannot understand simply the time immediately preceding the second advent. The last period is to be regarded as extending from the first advent to the second advent. During this period, as time went on, they were to come, and to come in character. In Hebrew style, it is said that the mockers were to come “with mockery”with their mocking at holy things.
2. What they were to mock at. “Walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?” What they were to say was to be determined, not by truth, nor by fact, but by prejudice, and by prejudice founded on their walking after their own lusts, i.e., their loose mode of life. In the first psalm those that “walk in the counsel of the ungodly” are next represented as “standing in the way of sinners,” and then as “sitting in the seat of the scornful.” So here those whose life cannot bear looking into, disliking the coming because it meant a check to them, are represented as saying, with an air of mocking triumph, “Where is the promise of his coming?” i.e., it has turned out to be vain and mendacious.
3. How they were to argue.
(1) Fact on which they were to base their argument. “For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep.” By “the fathers” we are probably to understand the men of the first Christian generation. The promise was made to them, and they lived in hope of its being fulfilled in their day. But the day came when, without its being fulfilled, they fell asleep. There is an example here of the use of language from which there has been receding. Christians speak of their friends in Christ as falling asleep. The sentiment comes out in the word cemetery, which means “sleeping-place,” with which we associate an awaking. The mockers, no longer in accord with Christianity, use Christian language. The fact on which they base their argument is not to be denied: the use which they made of it is taken up at 2Pe 3:8.
(2) Argument drawn from uniformity. “All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” We are warranted in proceeding on the uniformity of natureon the sun rising tomorrow as it has done today, and in days past. Nor is it surprising that scientific men should be more than ordinarily impressed with the fact of uniformity, by their researches into nature. Peter here prophesies that in the last days mockers would seek to turn the fact of uniformity against Christianity, and it has remarkably turned out as he prophesied. This is really the line that has been followed by many skeptics. They have said, “All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” On this ground Hume argued against miracles. “A miracle,” he said, “is a violation of a law of nature: but the universal experience of ourselves, and of the whole human family, proves that the laws of nature are uniform, without exception.” Strauss and his school have sought to establish, not merely the incredibility, but the impossibility, of miracles. Their argument bears against such a subversion of the present order of things as is connected with the second coming. They have thus unconsciously fulfilled prophecy.
III. CATASTROPHISM IS THE PAST. “For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the Word of God; by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” Peter, in putting his finger on catastrophism, refers to it as what they willfully forgot. It required an effort of their will to shut it out. The impression of the event, though it had taken place centuries before, had not died out. His reference to the Flood is introduced by a statement bearing on the way in which it was brought about. This is founded on the Mosaic account of creation. The first part of the statement refers to the bringing of the heavens into existence. There were heavens from of old, by the Word of God. This is the first thought of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven.” It did not exist from eternity, but was brought into existence by the creative word of God. The second part of the statement refers, not to the bringing of the earth into existence, but to its receiving its present form. An earth was compacted out of water, i.e., as material. The reference seems to be to the waters of chaos in the Mosaic record (Gen 1:2). It was also compacted, not “amidst water,” as it is unwarrantably in the Revised Version, but “by means of water,” i.e., as the instrumental element. The reference seems to be to the gathering together of the waters into one place. Behind the water as material and instrumental element was the directing and potent Word of God. Having made this statement, Peter introduces the Flood as his answer to the mockers. The connecting words are,” by which means.” The use of the plural creates a difficulty. The most probable solution is that the reference is to the water and the Word of God. This is favoured by the latter being carried forward in the next verse. Water, let loose by God, flooded the then world, i.e., not the earth simply, but the earth as supporting its then inhabitants. There was catastrophism of the most impressive nature. There was (let the mockers note it) a mighty disturbance of uniformity. The world that then was perished.
IV. CATASTROPHISM IN THE FUTURE. “But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” There is suggestion, not of their ceasing to be heavens and earth, but rather of there being still heavens and earth, only not such as we now see them. The Word of God has fixed the destiny of the new heavens and earth. There is catastrophism in store for them. They are here represented as stored up for fire. The agency is not far to seek, being in the heart of the earth. There is suggestion of the fire being needed for the new heavens and earth on account of the ungodly men that have defiled them. For their God-forgetting, God-defying life, theywhen the appointed day comesare to be adjudged to destruction. The heavens and earth that they have defiled are to be subjected, not to water (which is forbidden by promise), but to an agency more penetrative and subduing. The same Word that carried out the catastrophism of water is to carry out the catastrophism of fire.
V. THE DIVINE MODE OF RECKONING. “But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” This is Peter’s answer to the suggestion in the argument of the mockers, “From the day that the fathers fell asleep.” By addressing his readers as “beloved,” he bespeaks their attention. He bespeaks their attention to a thing which they were in danger of forgetting. He bespeaks their attention to a thing which was principally to be considered. “Forget not this one thing.” The language in which this one thing is expressed is an extension of what is found in Psa 90:4, both sides being presented here. Peter teaches that our ideas of short and long in time are not to be applied to God’s mode of reckoning. A day is what is short with us. We think of there being many, many days of life. But a day may be long with God. If we think of the days of creation, how much was crowded into each of them! If we think of the day on which the Flood came, how much characterized it! If we think of the last day of our Lord’s Passion, how much affecting human history, and affecting angelic history, and affecting even God himself, was crowded into it! We are taught to think of a nation being born in a day. So we do not need to think of more than a day as required for the events that are to be included in the second coming. On the other hand, a thousand years is what is long with us. Men used to think of that as the limit of human life. But we cannot now think of our living a hundred years. But a thousand years may be a short time with God. “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” There was a waiting for thousands of years before the arrival of man on the earth; and if thousands of years have to elapse before the winding up of human history, in the sure and effectual evolving of his purpose that may not be long to God.
VI. EXPLANATION OF SEEMING DELAY. “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is long-suffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” When a promise is made for a specified time, and is not fulfilled at that time, there is real delay there, the explanation of which may be found to be slackness. Such slackness cannot be attributed to God. There is apparent delay, and some, in the disappointment of their expectation, and in the working of unbelief, may say it is slackness; but that cannot be justified. It is said that “the Judge is before the door,” which may be construed as an immediate coming. But the real meaning is that Christ is ready for judgment. Why, then, does he not come? The answer is that things are not ready for his coming. Christ’s people are charged with making things ready for his coming, so far as they themselves are concerned, and so far as others are concerned; and they have not things in sufficient readiness. It is not, then, that God is slack concerning his promise, as though he were not sufficiently interested; it is, says Peter, that he is long-suffering to you-ward. He is bearing with Christian people in their dereliction of duty, in their slackness in performing their part. And not merely they, hat others, arc thought of by God. He does not wish that any should perish. It is not according to his heart that even one whom he has created, and for whom Christ has died, should remain in misery. This is a thought Which comes out strongly in the prophecy of Ezekiel. “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God.” “Say unto them [that pine away in their sins], As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” The positive side of the Divine wish is that all should come to repentance. He has not an interest merely in some, but in all. None can be happy in sin; it can only be pining away, as the prophet puts it. None can be happy without repentance, i.e., change of mind; but this change of mind he wishes for all. And it is not a mere wish, but it is a wish that has been manifested in the cross of Christ; and, in the operations of the Spirit, and in the workings of Providence, this is the end which is sought. Let us all respond, then, to the Divine wish which accompanies the Divine long-suffering.
VII. THE COMING CHARACTERIZED. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” By “the day of the Lord” we are to understand the day of Christ’s glorious manifestation. The interest of that day will all center round his appearance and judicial action. The coming of the day is regarded with certainty. In the original “will come” has the emphatic position: “Will come the day of the Lord.” Whether our thoughts are contrary to it, or whether we have not thoughts about it at all, it will come. Peter touches on the suddenness of the coming, in this echoing the Master, as Paul also did: “Will come the day of the Lord as a thief.” He more than touches on an awe-inspiring association of the coming. There will be a general conflagration. It was said in prophecy that the heavens shall vanish away like smoke. Here it is said that they shall pass away with a great noise. This is to be explained by the clause which follows, which is to be taken with it. The elements, i.e., of which the heavens are composed, shall be dissolved with fire. The noise, then, is the rushing sound of the destroying fire, or the consequent crash. The conflagration is to embrace the earth: “The earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” The works must be understood as including man’s works. Some works long outlive the workers. It is hoped that some works of art may survive for centuries. But, however long they survive, they will at last be burnt up. That teaches us that there is what is higher than art. And we need not wonder at this being the destiny of man’s works on earth, when it is to be the destiny of even God’s works on earth. Lift up your eyes to the heavens in the stillness of night, or look upon the earth beneath bathed in the sun-light of a summer day: can it be that catastrophism shall reign wherever your eyes rest? can it be that the wild, all-devouring element of fire shall lay hold on all this material fabric? So prophecy tells us that it will be. It will come, the day of general conflagration – R.F.
2Pe 3:11-18
Duty in view of second coming.
I. REFERENCE TO GOD IN OUR CONDUCT. “Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?” The catastrophe that is to accompany the second coming is here put down in time present in the original, to raise an impression of its certainty: “Seeing that these things are thus all dissolved.” If the conclusions of some scientific men are to be accepted, this is literally true, inasmuch as they say that there are processes going on which must end in the material fabric being worn out. It is in the condition of a clock that, if not wound up, must run out. The catastrophe thus vividly presented is here made a reason for our attending to ourselves. “What manner of persons,” Peter exclaims, “ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?” Holy living is the living of those who are set apart to the service of a holy God. Godliness points to this living as based on our relation to God. By the use of the plural in the original there is brought out the manifold workings and forms of a godly life. There is the feeling of dependence on God and of fear toward him, desire for the blessing from God and trust in him for the blessing, the feeling of love toward God for what he is and of gratitude toward him for his mercies, knowledge of God’s will and the resolution to do his will,all this finding expression in worship, self-command, and sacrifice for others.
II. ATTITUDE TOWARD THE SECOND COMING. “Looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God.” This is the only instance of the day being called “the day of God.” We must think of the Father ordering the day and its events, that the Son after his mysterious Passion may be magnified. “As the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son also quickeneth whom he will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son; that all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” Our attitude to the day of God is to be that of expectancy. We are to look for its coming or presence. We are to allow it to dwell in our minds, so as to call forth our earnest desire after it. The first Christians looked for it to come in their day. They were nearer the Divine intention than those who, because it may not be for thousands of years, do not think of it at all. But our attitude is also to be that of active preparation. The proper translation is neither “haste unto” nor “earnestly desire,” but “hasten on.” The idea of hastening on the coming is unusual; but it is remarkable that it is elsewhere expressed by Peter. “Repent ye therefore,” he said to the assembly in Solomon’s porch, “and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that he may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things.” It is thus Petrine and scriptural to think of the coming as an event which may be accelerated by our repentance and prayers and efforts for the diffusion of the gospel.
III. WHAT IS NECESSITATED BY THE SECOND COMING OUTWARDLY. “By reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” It is said that the heavens are not clean in God’s sight. The idea here is that even the heavens have been defiled, by reason of those who have lived under them, and upon the earth. Once Christ did not shrink from dwelling on this earth, being on his saving mission; but when he is to come in his judicial character, he is to be a consuming fire, at his approach, even to material things. It is said in Rev 20:11, that from the face of him that sat upon the great white throne the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. So here it is taught that even the heavenly world is to be subjected to fire, not merely to the breaking up of its order, but even to the melting of its elements.
IV. WHAT IS LOOKED FOR AT THE SECOND COMING OUTWARDLY. “But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” This is in accordance with Rev 21:1, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” The most striking promise is in Isa 65:17, “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered.” The newness does not necessarily refer to the materials of which the present heavens and earth are Composed; these may be transformed so as to constitute new heavens and earth, just as our bodies are to be transformed so as to constitute new bodies. The new heavens and new earth are to correspond to newness of charactera correspondence of the outward to the inward never to be disturbed. It is said in Isa 66:22, “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I shall make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.” The expression of the idea here is, “wherein dwelleth righteousness”has its permanent abode, from which it will never take flight. It will be a world where there is no superstition or infidelity, where there is a correct, bright conception of what God is, and a due appreciation of the work of Christ. It will be a world where there is nothing to interfere with social well-being, where jealousies and antipathies are unknown. “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord! Is not, then, the institution of this order of things to be much thought of by us, and to be earnestly desired? We may regret that much that is beautiful in the present order of things is to vanish. Shall we never again look upon that beautiful sky, those beautiful landscapes, the beautiful flowers? But there is ample compensation in the higher beauty to which the present is to give place. When we have got the glorious resurrection-body, there will be no regret that we have left the present body behind. So when we see the new heavens and the new earth, there will be no regret that the former things have passed away. In their higher forms they will have a greater power of lifting the soul to God. The teaching of Peter regarding the heavens and earth agrees with what Paul teaches in the eighth of Romans, “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” Peter emphasizes fire as the liberating element; Paul simply notes the liberation. Peter, again, thinks of a fit abode for righteousness; Paul thinks of an abode that shadows forth the liberty of the glory of the children of God. There is use in looking forward to new heavens and a new earth. We feel that the present arrangement is not independent of God. He made it, and he can alter it. He can make a world suitable to a probationary state, and a world suitable to a state of attained righteousness, He can make a world suitable for his people in their present imperfect state, and a world suitable to them when he puts glory on them.
V. PERSONAL CONCERNS AT THE SECOND COMING. “Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for these things, give diligence that ye may be found in peace, without spot and blameless in his sight.” We look for a great catastrophe at the end of time as that which has been certainly foretold. We do not look for that alone, but for that as introducing a great reconstruction in the production of new heavens and earth. This is connected with our seeing God on the day formerly referred to. Our personal anxiety must be to be found in peace on that occasionto have God as our Friend, so that the catastrophe shall not reach us, and so that the new heavens and new earth shall be for our blessed and eternal abode. We can only expect this consummation by our being without spot and blameless. Spots and blemishes attract the fire of Divine judgment. This very earth and even the heavens have to be subjected to fire because they have been connected with man’s sin. Let us not think, then, that we can stand in God’s sight with hearts defiled. We must give diligence to have all spots and blemishes removed from us, in the use of the means of grace, in a constant recourse to the blood of Christ, in a constant endeavour to conform our life to the Divine will.
VI. INTERPRETATION OF PRESENT DELAY. “And account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation.” In explanation of the delay of the second coming, it was said formerly that “the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, but is long-suffering.” Here long-suffering is asserted of our Lord, apparently the Lord Jesus Christ, as the absolute Manifestation of the disposition of the Father. Here also there is connected with long-suffering its end, viz. salvation. Christ makes to us the offer of salvation; but he does not reject us so soon as we refuse his offer. He would teach us even from our experience of the bitterness of sin, he would disabuse our minds of false ideas of life, he would make us tired of a life of sin, he would make us turn in desire to a life of holiness. He has no quarter for sin; but he has patience for the sinner, he heaps mercies upon him; there is the continual mercy that he is not treated according to his desert. Thus by his continual goodness would he lead us to repentance, by his long-suffering he would compass our salvation, by his gentleness he would make us great. But for patience extended over years, Paul would never have lived to be a preacher of righteousness, and John Bunyan would never have lived to write the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ And so it is with the race as a whole. The offer of salvation has yet to be made to all. And even when the offer has been made, means have to be used to secure the acceptance of salvation. Therefore it is that the coming is delayed. Let us not, then, misinterpret the delay; let us not mistake what is long-suffering for slackness in promising, or indifference to sin.
VII. REFERENCE TO THE WRITINGS OF PAUL. “Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you; as also in all his Epistles, speaking in them of these things; wherein are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.” Peter refers to Paul by whom, on one occasion, he had been withstood, as his beloved brother, i.e., not ministerial associate, but brother to the readers and to himself alike, and alike dear to them. He also recognizes him as possessing a wisdom which was not his own. Paul had written to the same circle on the subject of the coming. If we think of the Asiatic circle, we turn to the Epistle to the Ephesians. In it the nearest approach to what Peter has been saying is to be found in Eph 5:27, “That he might present the Church to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” When Peter passes to other Epistles, we at once think of the Epistles to the Thessalonians. In these Paul expressly treats of delay in the second coming, and points out the attitude to be taken up. And this naturally suggests “some things hard to be understood.” What he had in his mind was probably the revelation of the man of sin. Of other things hard to be understood in Paul’s Epistles we may particularize the gathering up of all things in Christ, the doctrine of election especially as set forth in the ninth chapter of Romans, and the filling up of that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ in Colossians. Peter notes the bad use made of these things hard to be understood, in common with other Scriptures, by the ignorant and unsteadfast, i.e., those who had not the essentials of Christian instruction, and did not hold to the Christian position once taken up by them. They “wrested them” as by a hand-screw, i.e., from their natural meaning to their own destruction. There is no support here to the Roman Catholic idea of withholding the Bible from the people. Because Scriptures, especially difficult Scriptures, are abused by the ignorant and unsteadfast, that is no argument against the good use of them by those who are exhorted in this same chapter to “remember the words spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through the apostles.” Let us, even when we (in company with Peter) do not thoroughly understand, humbly seek to get profit.
VIII. CAUTION. “Ye therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, beware lest, being carried away with the error of the wicked, ye fall from your own steadfastness.” What they knew beforehand was what Paul and Peter said about the second coming. The conclusion of the verse points especially to the foretold appearance of errorists before the coming. These were condemned by their lawless conduct. Let them not, then, as they valued his love in the gospel, be carried away with their error. They had firm footing; let them not be carried off their feet. Let them not be like Barnabas, the companion of Paul, who, when at the coming of some from James to Antioch, the Jews dissembled with Peter, he also was carried off his feet with their dissimulation (Gal 2:13).
IX. PARTING COUNSEL. “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” A tree is not a complete reality at once; but from a beginning there is progress toward an end. So we are not complete beings at once; but from a beginning there is a progress intended for us toward the end of our being. There may be growth in a wrong direction: what we are here exhorted to grow in is what of Divine assistance as sinners we need in order to come to the goal of our being. “Grow in grace,” which is to be taken as an independent conception. If we are not growing under gracious influence, then we have only a name to live. Our faith grows as it becomes more ample and conquering. Our love grows as it becomes more fervent and diffusive. Our hope grows as it becomes more calm and bright. We are to grow in self-abasement, in power of work, in power of concentrating the mind on the truth, in power to bear hardships and injuries. We are to grow especially in that in which we find ourselves to be deficient. We are further exhorted to grow in “the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” This is in keeping with the great importance which is attached to knowledge in this Epistle. It is that by which we grow. The knowledge which is thus nutritive is knowledge of Christ as opening up and dispensing the treasures of Divine grace, and as showing in his own life what grace would bring out in ours. Let us, then, have a worthy conception of Christ in our minds; it is upon this that our growth in grace depends.
X. DOXOLOGY. “To him be the glory both now and for ever. Amen.” It is to Christ that the adoration is offered. To him be glory now; for it is to the knowledge of him that we owe all of grace that we have. To him be glory for ever, literally, “to the day of the age”the day on which eternity, as contrasted with time, begins, and which is never to be broken up, but is to be one long day. To him we are indebted, as for all that we have now, so for all that we hope to have hereafter. Thus does the Epistle end without the customary salutations, simply with the carrying forward of Christ into our eternal life. It becomes every one who has followed out the thought of the Epistle to add his devout “Amen.”R.F.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
2Pe 3:1. Your pure minds Your sincere minds. This seems to be an intimation that their minds were not yet corrupted, either by the false teachers, or by the scoffers. They were through Divine grace pure, or untainted with the evils which he describes; and St. Peter was desirous that they should continue so, 2Pe 3:17. It was his grand view in both his epistles, to stir up their untainted and sincere minds to remember and attend to what they had learned from the apostles and prophets. See ch. 2Pe 1:12; 2Pe 1:1
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
2Pe 3:1 . Not the commencement of a new epistle (Grotius), but of a new section, directed against the deniers of the advent of Christ.
] “This epistle I write to you, as already the second.” Pott: , . Fronmller incorrectly explains by: “now being near my death.” The epistle first written is the so-called First Epistle of Peter.
] applies both to this and the First Epistle of Peter (Winer, p. 128 [E. T. 177]). The prepos. does not stand here in place of (Gerhard), but refers to the contents.
] for the phrase: , cf. chap. 2Pe 1:13 .
belongs to .
, cf. Phi 1:10 .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
2 Peter 3:19
Analysis:Reference to the long-predicted rise of scoffers, and refutation of their unbelief
1This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: 2That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us1 the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: 3Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days2 scoffers,3 walking after4 their own lusts, 4And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were5 from the beginning of the creation. 5For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of Grod the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:6 6Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word7 are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 8But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with8 the Lord as a thousand 9years, and a thousand years as one day.9 The10 Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward,11 not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
2Pe 3:1. This Epistle now, beloved, the second.The flow of fiery, prophetical diction beginning with 2Pe 1:16, comes here to a point of rest. Peter takes up 2Pe 1:15. in the acceptation of already, gives no good sense. [But this is doubtful; we have only to render this Epistle, already a second and the idea is plain that this Epistle was written very soon after the former; this is the opinion of Bengel, priorem paullo ante scripserat; cf. the same author on 2Pe 1:12, alteram hanc epistolam scribit brevi intervallo post primam.M.] Connect with not with . Now in the near prospect of death and in the presence of scoffers denying the coming of Christ, write I unto you. This passage defines more explicitly the somewhat indefinite statement of 2Pe 1:15; but this does not therefore exclude a reference to the Gospel according to St. Mark.
In both which I rouse, etc. , the pronoun is in the Plural, because is implied in , Winer, p. 154., it seems, must be taken as a Conjunctive for . On the sense see 2Pe 1:13. may be connected with or ; the latter seems preferable., see Php 1:10 from (sun-light) and , something attentively examined in the light of the sun and found genuine, hence pure, clear, unmixed, [unadulterated.M.] , 1Pe 1:13, this pure mind is at once opposed to errors in doctrine and to excuses for the practice of vices. A man of a pure mind believes and loves the truth, and grows holy in the truth. Roos. Such a mind can only be roused in the case of those, who are not in the truth, cf. Joh 18:37; Joh 3:21; 1Jn 1:6. A principal means thereto is the remembrance of the revelations of God, deposited in the writings of the Prophets and Apostles.
Ver 2. That ye should remember the words, etc.Here, as in 1Pe 1:10-12 and 2Pe 1:19, great weight is attached to the word of prophecy, which is brought into most intimate connection, with the Apostolical doctrines. , see 2Pe 1:21., 2Pe 2:21. apposition with as in Act 10:41. The author here repeatedly describes himself (as in 2Pe 1:1) as an Apostle, just as he describes himself in 2Pe 3:1 as the Author of the first Epistle., further definition of . The Infinite of intention or of further definition, Winer p. 341. ; de Wette makes these words to be governed by the Infinitive and gives the ungrammatical rendering of our Apostles. But it is more natural to connect with . This has a double Genitive; cf. Winer, pt. 3:30. The one of these Genitives relates to the announcement, the other to the origin of the doctrine.In the parallel passage, Judges 17, the reference to the Prophets is omitted.De Wettes interpretation being manifestly incorrect, we need not stop to refute his inference that the non-apostolical author here betrays himself and acts out of his character.
2Pe 3:3. Knowing this first that in the last of the days scoffers shall come.2Ti 3:1; cf. 1Ti 4:1. They are to consider it as a principal point of the prophetical and apostolical word that. Here we should expect the Accusative, governed by . Such, probably intentional, anacolutha are of frequent occurrence. Conceptions expressed by the casus recti of Participles, are exhibited with greater prominence, Winer, p. 594; cf. Act 15:23; Eph 4:2; Eph 3:17.
Shall come, cf. 2Pe 2:1; Mat 24:5; Mat 24:11; Mat 24:24; Mat 7:15; Mat 7:22; 1Jn 4:1. The parallel passage Judges 18 is almost identical; , , with the addition . . The Adjective Neuter is often used emphatically instead of the Substantive. Winer, p. 248. At the end of these present days of the world. [But as is the best supported reading, cf. App. Crit., it is better to translate in the last of the days; there is perhaps no difference in meaning, but the Plural seems to extend the expression over a wider space, so Alford; Wordsworth: From this reference, it appears that St. Jude wrote his Epistle after the present Epistle, and that he owned this Epistle to be the work of an Apostle, and therefore an authentic writing; and if authentic, then it must be also genuine, for it asserts itself to be written by St. Peter, 2Pe 1:1; 2Pe 1:17, where the writer describes himself as present at the transfiguration, at which only three Apostles were present, viz.: Peter, James and John.M.] (from to play, sport in or on) scoffers, deceivers; cf. LXX. in Isa 3:4, for , petulanti, petulantes, people that jest about things of the greatest importance. Here we encounter another class of adversaries of Christ, different from the false prophets and teachers described in the second chapter. The two classes have this in common, that they are Epicurean and Antinomian. in mind, cf. 2Pe 3:17; 2Pe 2:18-19. The appearance of such men is predicted Act 20:29; 1Ti 4:1; 2Ti 3:2, etc. If the reading is retained, it is necessary to use a mark of distinction after the latter word, rendering: they shall come in the spirit of scoffing, as scoffers, walking, etc. [They will not only be scoffers, but they will come in scoffing, like those of whom the Psalmist says, that their delight is in cursing, and that they clothe themselves with it, as it were, with a raiment (Psa 109:16-17); and the contrast is striking to the Divine words , Gen 22:17, cf. Eph 1:3, and Clem. Rom 1:24. Wordsworth.M.]
Walking after their own lusts.They no longer appear in sheeps clothing, but exhibit their wolf-nature. . brings out the self-will and opposition of these men to the law of God. . Bengel: This is the origin of error, the root of libertinism. Luther: These are our Epicureans and Sadducees, who believe neither one thing nor the other, who live as they think best and walk after their own lusts, considering permitted whatever suits their pleasure: examples of such are met on every hand., see 1Pe 4:3.
2Pe 3:4. Where is the promise of His coming?Similar to the daring words of the scoffers in Mal 2:17 : Where is the God of judgment? The same form of speech occurs in Luk 8:25; Psa 42:4; Psa 79:10. Where is it? e. g., Where is its fulfilment? It is nowhere to be found.
The promise.They use the language of believers, to whom the coming of their Lord is the most cherished desire, cf. Luk 21:28.
Of His coming.. Used here in a more special sense than in 2Pe 1:16, of the visible coming of Christ to the judgment of the wicked and to the consummation of His Kingdom, Mat 24:3; Mat 24:27; Mat 24:37; 1Th 2:19; 1Th 3:13; 2Pe 3:12., they do not take His name on their lips, so much do they disdain it. [Polycarp, 100:7: Whosoever does not confess the suffering of the cross, is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither resurrection nor a judgment,he is the first-born of Satan.M.]
For since the fathers fell asleep. scil. . De Wette is wrong in saying: The author appears to assume these scoffers, as present and that prediction as fulfilled. No; this appearance springs solely from critical prejudices. Peter puts himself into the time of the fulfilment of that prediction, when the first generation of believers had already fallen asleep; most of them had expected the visible coming of the Lord as immediately connected with the destruction of Jerusalem; but after that catastrophe had taken place without the expected visible coming of the Lord, the scoffers took occasion to deny the coming of the Lord altogether. This Peter foresees in the Spirit. The word fathers denotes therefore not the Patriarchs, the ancestors of the Jewish people, nor (as Dietlein maintains) any preceding generation standing to that immediately succeeding it in the relation of fathers, but the fathers of the second generation of Christians. Otherwise the sentence would be pleonastic, because follows after. like , to be understood in a mocking sense, as imitating the language of believers.
All things remain thus from the beginning of the creation., they remain without intermission, the whole world remains according to its old constitution, in the consistence which it has once for all, it remains through all mutations. Huther arbitrarily inserts the idea, since the fathers . hath come to pass; all things continue thus.Others supply , as it was from the beginning of creation, which is equally arbitrary. The construction is pregnant: All things from the time of our fathers remain in a general way, as they are; yea, from the beginning of creation all things remain essentially the same. Bengel gives to a pregnant force: All things remain thus as they remain from the beginning of the world. [Sic permanent, ut permanent.M.] Dietlein makes these erring spirits speculative philosophers who advance the proposition that the history of creation is endless; the destiny of the human race is not one that actually occurs at a given time and terminates the course of the world, but it fulfils itself in an untemporal (unzeitlich) manner (it is immanent, to use the language of modern speculation); and this they infer from the circumstance, that one generation passes away after another, and is dispatched as they suppose, and that therefore it cannot be otherwise with all succeeding generations. There is no reason to assume such a system in the case of these trifling Epicureans, and is absolutely in conflict with such an assumption.Luther explains the inference of the false teachers as follows: The world has stood so long, and has always remained thus; should it now at last become otherwise? We must however add in the sense of those scoffers: The coming of Christ and the destruction of the world were long since predicted as connected with the destruction of Jerusalem without coming to pass; where then is now the word of the Scripture?
2Pe 3:5. For it is hidden to them, because they thus will it.Refutation of the assertion that all things remain in the same condition by the fact of the flood. belongs to , not to , as in 2Pe 3:8, and denotes not to choose a view (eine Ansicht belieben, as Dietlein maintains), for this meaning cannot be verified. Huther, indeed, cites a passage from Herodotus, but it is isolated and proves nothing for the New Testament. It denotes a guilty ignorance, as Luther translates; they are wilfully ignorant of it; they are wilfully blind to the consideration of the flood. Winer, p. 489, note [says: In 2Pe 3:5, I prefer the rendering: latet eos hoc (what follows) volentes, i. e., volentes ignorant, to the other: latet eos (what follows) hoc (what precedes) volentes, i. e., contendentes. The former brings out more clearly the guilt of the mockers. Neither in Col 2:18, is to be taken as an adverb.M.]
That the heavens and an earth were from of old, etc., as usual in the Plural like , cf. 2Co 12:2., from of old, from the first origin of all things., de Wette, Huther, al., refer it primarily to , but then also to . This might pass grammatically (Winer, p. 368), but how are we to conceive the heavens to consist out of and through water? De Wette, indeed, observes that the conception that the heavens (the firmament) were made out of water, may be justified by Gen 1:6, but he is conscious of the unsatisfactoriness of this exposition, since he proposes to refer to the earth and to the heavens (through the water). This is very forced, and in no event applicable to the starry heavens, which are of course included in . According to the representation of the Bible, the firmament () consists not out of water, but forms a wall of partition between the waters above and the waters below, Gen 1:7-8.The earth originated out of water, out of the dark matter in which it was comprehended, and through water, i. e., (as Winer, p. 438, explains it) through the agency of water, which partly descended into the lower parts of the earth, and partly formed the clouds in the sky. The earth, moreover, manifoldly received its diversified form through the water, consists in a great measure in water and this element, as already noticed by Oecumenius, holds it together and cements it.The Indo-gyptian cosmogonies, to which de Wette refers, and which are said to contain an account of a chemical origin of the world out of water, are altogether irrelevant. [Bengel: Gradatio, aqua terram texerat: ex aquis terra emersit: et aqua inserviit, ut terra consisteret, sicut Creator eam formavit et collocavit. Aqua ceteroqui levior est, et terra inferiores partes petit, usque eo, ut omnis aqua, in linea recta a superficie ad centrum orbis hujus sive rotundi systematis, terram semper sub se habeat: sed in ipsa superficie terra passim supra aquas plus minusve eminet; et vel hunc aqua locum quasi invita, et potentissimo jussu divino coacta, terr concessit et reliquit. Exo 20:4; Psa 24:2; Psa 104:5-8; Psa 136:6; Job 38:10.The assertion that the earth arose out of the water is opposed to the dogma of Simon Magus, that it was engendered from fire. Wordsworth referring to Hippolyt., Refut. haer, p. 165.M.]
By the word of God may refer both to the heavens and to the earth, cf. Gen 1:6; Gen 1:9. But we may also join these words more intimately with , which appears to be preferable, as it gives greater prominence to the thought, that it does not consist a moment longer than God permits. Bengel: By the word of God is defined the duration of all things, so that it cannot be longer or shorter. [The reference here is to the creative energy of the Divine Logos. The Jewish readers of Peters Epistle were familiar with that doctrine, which was opposed to the error of the Gnostics who held that the universe was made by angels or by the demiurge opposed to the supreme God. Irenus I., 19, declares, that the world was not made by angels, nor by any powers separated from God, but by His Word, i. e., Christ. Psa 32:6; Joh 1:3. The same author says, II., 2 Peter 2 : All things which God made, He made by the indefatigable Word, even as John the disciple of the Lord declares concerning Him, Joh 1:3.M.]
2Pe 3:6. Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. cannot possibly refer to (Huther), more especially because follows after; nor can it signify: quapropter, nor through which circumstances it also came to pass that. (Dietlein), still less yet (dennochLuther). It evidently belongs to . It was just the heavens and the earth which became the instruments of destruction of the then , i. e., for the then existing world of human beings and animals. Peter uses in precisely the same sense, 2Pe 2:5. The heavens became such an instrument of destruction, when their windows were opened and it rained as never before since the creation of the world, Gen 7:11. The earth which had been founded upon the waters and risen out of the water, Psa 24:2, in obedience to the command of God was compelled to pour forth its treasures of water, Gen 8:2, in order to destroy man and beast. Who would have believed this before the flood came? Who would have supposed that the heavens and earth did contain within them such powers of destruction, seeing that they consisted so long before? Every attempt of taking in another sense, understanding it of the whole world, of the universe (Huther, al.), or more particularly of the earth (Calov), fails to bring out the full force of which was then to be circumscribed to such an extent as to denote a great mutation, which conflicts with grammatical usage. But here we must take a retrospective view of , 2Pe 3:5, in order to understand the full refutation of the antagonistic proposition. l. should be joined not only with , but also with . The heavens and the earth even in the time of Noah had consisted from of old, upwards of 1600 years; from this circumstance the men of that time might have drawn the inference that all things in the world of man would ever remain, even as they were; but how fallacious was that inference! 2. With this is connected the thought, that considering that the earth came into existence and does consist by the Word of God, the people of that time might surely have been able to understand that it could be destroyed by the self-same Word. 3. The event has shown, that the world of man was destroyed just by the heavens and the earth, which to them had the appearance of an imperishable existence. 4. Now the heavens and the earth, as intimated in 2Pe 3:7, underwent also a change in that catastrophe. That flood which covered the whole earth would be inexplicable without an extraordinary influence exerted by God upon the heavens and the earth, whereby their condition was changed. Gen 9:11; cf. Gen 10:25, where reference is made to an extraordinary terrestrial catastrophe, expressly testify that the earth was destroyed by the flood, and that it presented in many respects an appearance very different from that which it had before that mighty revolution.
2Pe 3:7. But the heavens and the earth which are now, by His word are kept in store. . belongs also to and presupposes a change wrought upon the heavens and the earth by the flood; according to our exposition, it is not in antithesis with . . The same Divine omnipotence which commanded the water to destroy men and to lay waste the earth, will hereafter destroy the present world by fire, and not only change the surface of the earth. [Irenus calls the last conflagration, diluvium ignis. Bengel: Ignis confutabit empctas.M.]
Kept in store., properly, to lay up in store, to treasure up, e. g., grain or a treasure. The meaning is not, that the present world is only a treasure gathered together and saved from the deluge, merely a remnant of the original world-totality. Such an idea belongs not to . But the reference is doubtless partly to the promise (Gen 9:15), and partly to the redemption in Christ. Calov:The world, for a certain time, is as yet in store and left unhurt, like treasure stored up in a chest, as yet untouched. Huther justly rejects Dietleins notion that the idea of profit must be held fast, in the sense that the heavens and the earth are the materials stored up for the exercise of punishment, yet so that they shall perish under the punishment.
Reserved unto fire, etc. must not be connected with , but with . Just as fire is even now an instrument of punishment to the world, so it will be used as an instrument of the destruction of the world in the final judgment, cf. Gen 19:24; Amo 7:4; Isa 66:15; Dan 7:9; 2Th 1:8; Mat 3:12; Mat 25:41; Rev 19:20; Rev 20:10. This is enlarged upon in 2Pe 3:10., used several times by Peter, 1Pe 1:4; 2Pe 2:4; 2Pe 2:9; 2Pe 2:17..Calov:Not perfect destruction, but perdition and eternal death..Dietlein applies this to the whole human race, because with the exception of the converted, it is ungodly. [But he is here, as so often, inaccurate and unreliable. The reference is simply to the ungodly among men. The following passage from an oration by Melito, Bp. of Sardis, in the second century, published from the Syriac by Cureton, is an interesting relic of ancient exegesis: There was a flood of water, and all men and living creatures were destroyed by the multitude of waters, and the just were preserved in an ark of wood by the ordinance of God. So also it will be at the last time; there will be a flood of fire, and the earth will be burnt up, together with its mountains, and men will be burnt up with the idols which they have made; and the sea together with the isles will be burnt, and the just shall be delivered from the fury (of the fire), as their fellows in the ark (were saved) from the waters in the deluge.M.]
2Pe 3:8. But let this one thing not escape you, etc.This is not a second refutation of the scoffers, but the removal of an obstacle which believers might find in the protracted delay of Christs advent.
That one day is before the Lord.The shortest space of time before Him, is in His sight long enough for the execution of events, which in our computation would require a thousand years, and the longest space of time before Him passes away as rapidly as does a day to us. In order to occupy the right stand-point with respect to the coming of Christ, we must apply the standard of eternity, and not use human measures of time. The second clause of the proposition is taken from Psa 90:4. Time is not absolutely denied in the case of God, but His relation to time is very different from that sustained by us men, the creatures of a day. Bengel:Gods nologium (time-piece for eternity) differs from the horologium (time-piece for hours) of mortals. But how shall we understand this? If we could understand it, Moses and Peter would not have been under the necessity of adding with the Lord.Stier:He who created the heavens and the earth in six days, because He thus willed it, may also suddenly accomplish in one day that which under other circumstances would require a thousand years; in like manner He may ordain thousands of years to be to the world week-and-work-days before His great Sabbath begins to dawn. The longest time is only brief after Gods measure; yet it hastens and rushes irresistibly into eternity, just because it is time.Thiersch:The internal development of mankind, which must have reached its consummation before the end of the world, is so entirely dependent on the Divine disposal that at one time there may occur a step forward so mighty that we should hardly have expected it to take place in a thousand years, while at another time, the course of development, retarded by God, does not progress in a thousand years any further than at other times in a day. This is as incorrect as Dietleins view, that God will punish in one day the sin of thousands of years, and thus equalize the great disfiguring which by so long a duration had come into eternity; that otherwise the duration of time with God is of great, though not of necessary, importance, because a thousand years are before Him as one day.The Fathers, as is well known, have drawn from this passage the inference that the world is to last six thousand years, especially as Heb 4:9 speaks of a Sabbath-time of the people of God, but without sufficient reason.
2Pe 3:9. The Lord is not tardy. . B, to delay, to postpone [to be late.M.], usually construed with the Accusative, but here with the Genitive. See Winer, 30.De Wette: is not taken in relation to a definite point of time, according to human expectation, as in 1Ti 3:15, but with reference to the purpose and counsel (of God); for although with reference to the former the author admitted a delay, he denied the title to such an expectation, according to 2Pe 3:8, because Gods views of time (as well as His thoughts and ways, cf. Isa 55:8) are different from mens. Similarly, Sirach , 35, 22; cf. Hab 2:3.Calov:Although it seems as though He were tardy (Rev 6:10), He is not tardy after the manner of men, from procrastination or neglect, but from long-suffering, for, as Justin observes, He prefers repentance to punishment., as in 2Pe 3:8, denotes God the Father. . The reference here is not to scoffers, who deny the coming of Christ, but to weak believers.
But He is long-suffering towards us, etc.. He is long-suffering, putting off His punishment for a long time, Mat 18:26; Mat 18:29; Luk 18:7; 1Th 5:14. , towards us, the called, then to us all, to men in general. , to will, as the result of conscious deliberation, but not with irresistible coercion. Calov:As an earthly king would desire to see all his subjects happy, as far as they are his subjects, not as far as they are malefactors. , to go into, to enter, Mat 15:17; cf. Eze 18:23; Eze 33:11; 1Ti 2:4.The adherents of the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination wrongly restrict this passage to the elect. Calvin himself explains it of the will of God revealed in the Gospel as contrasted with His hidden counsel.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. A sure means of resisting the temptations of the last anti-Christian times and of repelling the assaults of deceivers is keeping the prophetic and apostolic word in an honest and good heart, even as Christ often exhorts us to keep His sayings against the subtle attacks of the enemy.In the last days there will be a thorough confluence of all the corruption engendered by former unbelief.He who by his lusts is corrupted in error, will do what he desires, and will not be deterred from it by any fear of God. This necessitates an unbelieving cancelling of all the truth of God, and if good proofs of such pretences are wanting, scoffing and witty humour must become the substitutes of proof. H. Rieger.
2. Peter in making mention of the last days, draws no distinction between the second and third coming of Jesus, as made prominent in the Revelation of John, and alluded to in 1Co 15:23-24. This circumstance deserves to be noticed in connection with the inquiry relating to the date of this Epistle.
3. The Word of God composed in writing is the instrument of our conversion and illumination, the store-house of all salutary knowledge and wisdom, and the armory against all sorts of enemies. Gerhard.
4. Although we must identify the scoffers primarily as those deceivers, who arose at the end of the Apostolic age, the prophecy, nevertheless, is ever undergoing new fulfilments in the course of time, and will have its most fearful fulfilment in the last times. In ancient times, Simon Magus is cited as denying the end of the world (in the Pseudo-Clementine Recogn., 2Pe 3:3); in the middle ages, a heresy sprung up, which maintained the imperishableness of the world. v. Meyer asks whether that portrait of the future does not perfectly apply to the rebellious liberty and wanton licentiousness of the corrupt priesthood and monastic orders of the middle ages and later times? The Hegelian school of philosophers (at least those of the left side) deride the Churchs faith in a visible advent of Christ, in the judgment and the end of the world, as a pietistic notion. They see in the dominant influence of the idea (Begriff), brought about by the Hegelian philosophy, Christ returned, and regard the end of pietism, of orthodox Christianity as heretofore existing, to be the end of the world. Richter.
5. It is an old trick of the devil to oppose the course of nature to the word and promises of God, seeing that God is the Author of nature, and able at His pleasure to change or wholly destroy it. Gerhard.
6. The traditions of other nations also contain the hypothesis that the world originated out of water. The Chinese and the Egyptians teach that water is the oldest element. The Vedas of the Hindoos declare that this world was originally water; the code of Manu declares that water was the first thing which God created; Ramayana reports that originally all things were water, and that the earth was formed out of it. But this, so far from being a ground of suspicion against the teaching of Scripture, in connection with other reasons, constitutes a proof in its favour.
7. In like manner all nations have their legends of the great deluge, of which the highest mountains, the graves and caverns of the earth bear testimony. The deluge, according to Scripture, was not partial and local, but universal; but natural science, to be sure, is incompetent to account for it by natural causes.
8. The preservation of the world, as well as its beginning, depends altogether on the will, the word and the direction of God. The word of God is not only the architect of the heavens and the earth, but also the prop and foundation of this edifice, Heb 1:3. Gerhard.
9. The statements of Peter respecting the world being reserved unto fire, are partly connected with the sayings of Christ, Mar 9:44; Mat 3:10; Mat 3:12; Mat 25:41; Mat 13:40; Mat 13:42; Mat 6:22, and partly, where he goes beyond them, to be regarded as a revelation which he had received. The religions of the pagans and the philosophemes of the Greeks and Romans, frequently describe fire as the end of the world. Zoroaster assumed a dissolution of the mountains by the action of fire. The Orphic cosmogony, Heraclitus and the Stoics, the Epicureans, Pliny, Ovid, the Gallicans and the Scandinavians coincide in this respect. The Mexicans describe the fourth age of the world, as the age of fire. The Hindoos also teach the future burning of the world. This fact proves nothing against the truth of this doctrine. On the contrary, it can only deepen the overpowering impression of the sacred revelations of the final judgment. Dietlein.As men are melted and purified by the fire (of the law, the love of God and the sufferings of Christ), so it will fare with the earth which goes the course of man. In the time of Tycho de Brahe, according to the opinion of some, another solar system met perhaps a similar fate. Richter.
10. Although time was created simultaneously with the creature, it is nevertheless to God also a reality, otherwise He would not interfere with time and be conscious of what occurs in time; but He is superior to the river of time and controls it. A thousand years with Him are as one day, similar, (so Bengel puts it), as a thousand flourins are with a rich man as a farthing.
11. Even before Justin and other fathers gave currency to the opinion that the world should last six thousand years, the ancient Etruscans taught from tradition that the worlds duration was fixed at 6000 years, that the sixth millennium would bring the end and the great year.
12. Calov rightly declares 2Pe 3:9 to be an unanswerable proof against the absolute decree of Calvin, and quotes also 1Ti 2:4. God wills to save all men only in Christ and in the order of repentance and faith.
[13. Bp. Conybeare on 2Pe 3:5 : The truth of the case is, God does not interpose in a miraculous manner upon every instance of sin: as He hath made men free agents, so He doth not interrupt the use of this liberty by breaking in upon the common order of causes and effects. Hence nature goes on for the most part in one uniform course; and exemplary punishments are reserved only for extraordinary occasions. Yet still God hath not left Himself without witness: many predictions of His prophets have been already confirmed by fact; the old world was destroyed by a miracle, and Sodom and Gomorrah are set forth for an example, having suffered the vengeance of eternal fire. Instances of this kind, it must be confessed, are rare: however, those few which have been afforded us are enough to alarm the sinner. Men should not flatter themselves that their crimes are forgotten, because they are yet unpunished: but rather dread the delays of vengeance. Though mercy spares them for the present, yet this very mercy, if slighted, will increase their future ruin.M.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The advent of Christ: 1. Its signs and certainty. 2. The particulars attending it. 3. The preparation for it.As the coming of the Lord draws nearer, the denial and derision of it will grow stronger.It should be our most anxious care to be ready, whether the Lord come early or late.Why does God defer the full punishment of the ungodly to the day of judgment? 1. Because the measure of their unrighteousness is not yet wholly filled; 2. Because it is His will to accord to sinners room for repentance; 3. In order to set His long-suffering towards all men, in the clearest light; 4. In order to make more manifest the wickedness of those who will not be converted.Let us take heed, not to abuse the long-suffering of God, but to know the time of our visitation, Luk 19:44.What is the longest life in the light of eternity? A span of time of 1 to 2 hours duration.
Starke:As frail men grow soon tired and are overcome of sleep, so it is with Christians; hence it is necessary that they should be constantly stirred, shaken and roused, Heb 12:1.The works of our bad Christians show that they believe neither in heaven nor hell, neither in angels nor in the devil, but the truth will come home to them, Zep 1:12.Only see, how deeply man can fall through the violence of his lusts; deeper than the devil himself, who denies neither God nor His judgment, but trembles at it, Mat 8:29; Jam 2:19.Ignorance in things human or Divine is never good, but malicious ignorance, which refuses to hear and to know the truth, is worthy of hell-fire, Isa 1:11.The present world will be more severely visited than the former world, which was laid waste by water; but this world will be burnt up by a consuming fire, which the Lord Himself will kindle, 2Th 1:7-8.The long-suffering of God is accompanied by tender love, looking to the salvation of men; hence He does not overtake them with His judgment of wrath, but gives them time enough to repent, Eze 33:11; Eze 2:1.
V. Herberger:1. How Peter answers five questions relating to the last day. 2. How thoroughly he instructs us as to the manner of our preparing for it. Ad 1. a. Whether we are yet to wait confidently for the last day? b. When and at what time it will come? c. Why Jesus has not come for so long a time? d and e. How and in what manner the last day will come? f. What the Lord Jesus will do and perform on the last day? Ad 2. a. In holy conversation and godliness, b To wait and haston unto the coming of the day of the lord, c. To give all dillgence that we may be found of Him without spot and blameless.
J. C. Storr:The waiting of believers for the coming of the day of God: 1. What they wait for; 2. who are they who wait? 3. How do they wait?
Stier:The Apostles word concerning the expectation of the last day: 1. The certainty of its coming; 2. The manner of its coming; 3. The preparation for it.
Kapff:The beginning and completion of the Kingdom of God: 1. The beginning in the creation of the world and man; 2. The completion in the renovation of man and of the world.
Lisco:The completion with which the citizens of the kingdom comfort themselves. The emptiness of the objections against the Bible-dogma of the Lords coming to judgment.
Staudt:The destruction of the world: 1. The reasons why many do not believe it; 2. How does the destruction of the world affect us?
Sharp:[O what confusion will this be to all unbelievers and impenitent sinners, when they shall see that very Person, of whom they thought so meanly, and whose offers of salvation they often despised, appearing in the clouds of heaven with ten thousand glorious angels about Him, and coming in the most terrible manner that can be imagined, to call them to account for their lives past, and to execute judgment upon all ungodly men! They will not then any longer, with the scoffers, that Peter tells us should be in the last days, say, where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation; for they shall be convinced that, however His coming was for good reasons deferred, yet He shall then come to purpose; to the everlasting confusion of their faces, that opposed, or despised, or neglected Him and His religion. Then shall they say, Yonder He is, whom we slighted, whose religion we denied, whose servants and followers we took to be no better than a company of credulous fools! Lo, yonder He is in the clouds, whose tenders of mercy we have refused, whose counsels we have rejected, to whose Spirit we have done despite! Yonder He is: but no longer a carpenters son; no longer a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; no longer a mean, obscure Galilean; no longer a crucified God, as we in derision called Him: but the everlasting Son of the everlasting Father; the Sovereign of angels! the Judge of mankind and of devils; the Lord of all things both in earth and heaven.M.]
[Cf. Joseph Medes Paraphrase and Exposition of St. Peter. 2. Epistle, 2 Peter 3. Works, II. 753.
Additional Sermon-Themes:
2Pe 3:3. Ridicule in matters of religion. Modern infidelity. Some prophecies are daily fulfilling.
2Pe 3:4. Miracles now neither necessary to the conviction of unbelievers, nor the conversion of sinners, (Fiddes). Consistency between the efficacy of prayer and the uniformity of nature. (Chalmers).
2Pe 3:8. Gods eternity in reference to the suspension of his promised purposes, (R. Hall).M.]
Footnotes:
[1] 2Pe 3:1. [German: This Epistle, beloved, I now write you as the second in order to rouse in it [as also in the former] your pure mind by way of remembrance.M.]
2Pe 3:2. [ Lachmann and Tischendorf read . According to the testimony of most of the authorities this must be considered the original reading. [, Rec. Oec; A. B. C. K. L., Cod. Sin.M.]
Translate: That ye should remember the words spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour given by your Apostles. Alford..and the commandment of the Apostles of their Lord and Saviour. Wordsworth. Fronmller agrees with Alford in the construction but, retaining , renders:. and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour, given to you by us the Apostles.As the authorities are overwhelmingly against , Alfords rendering is the most correct and grammatical.The construction is difficult, but the sense is clear and so far from affecting the genuineness of the Epistle, is an evidence for its genuineness. A forger would certainly have used , but a real Apostle may content himself with modestly saying .M.]
[2] 2Pe 3:3. Lachmann and Tischendorf read . [ Rec. K. L. . A. B.C*., Cod. Sin., Vulg., Copt., al., Alf., Words.M.]
[German: at the end of the days. Translate: in the last of the days.M.]
[3]2Pe 3:3.[ Omit , Rec., K. L., insert A. B. C., Vulg., Copt., Syr., al.M.] Griesb., Lachm., Tischend., another . [Scholz., Alf., Wordsw.M.]
[4]2Pe 3:3. [ Translate: Scoffers in scoffing, or (mockers in mockery.) Lillie.M.] [ before Rec, A., al., Oec.M.] after [B. C. K. L.] Griesbach. [Alford.]
[5]2Pe 3:4. [ German:.. all things remain thus from the beginning of the creation. Better than continue as they were from, etc., in E. V.M.]
[6] 2Pe 3:5. [ German: For it is hidden to them, because they thus will it, that the heavens and an earth were from of old out of water and by means of water consisting by the word of God.
Translate: For this escapes them of their own will, that the heavens were from of old, and the earth out of water and by means of water consisting by the word of God.M.]
[7] 2Pe 3:7. Lachmann reads , by the same word, as in 2Pe 3:6. But Tischendorf with B. C. K. L. reads .
[Translate with German: by His word. With this single, but important variation, the E. V. cannot be improved here.]
[8]2Pe 3:8. [ . Cod. Sin.M.]
[9] 2Pe 3:8. [ German: But let not this one thing be hidden to you, beloved, that one day is before the Lord as a thousand years, etc.
Translate: But let this one thing not escape you, (with allusion to 2Pe 3:5), beloved, that one day, etc.M.]
[10]2Pe 3:9. [ Insert before , Rec., K. L., al.; omit A. B. C., Cod. Sin.] Lachm. and Tischendorf.
[11] 2Pe 3:9. Lachmann reads , for your, the believers, sake; but Tischend., with many anthorities gives . [Cod. Sin. .M.]
[German: The Lord delayeth not with the promise, ae some consider it a delay, but He hath patience with us, not willing that some should perish, but that all should turn to repentance.
Translate: The Lord is not tardy concerning His promise, as some account tardiness, but He is longsuffering towards us, etc. Alford.M.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
In this Chapter the Apostle–closeth his Epistle, and a beautiful Close he maketh of it. He foretells of the last Days being marked with Scoffers. He assureth the Church of the Certainty of the Lord’s coming, and the Suddenness of it; and ends all in giving Glory to Christ.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
“This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: (2) That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: (3) Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, (4) And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. (5) For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: (6) Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: (7) But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
If there were no other authority than what the opening of this Chapter affords, in testimony, that the Apostle Peter is the inspired writer of it; this would be enough. For it proves, first, that he had written a former Epistle; secondly, that it was to the same persons to whom he sent his first, and in both which he calls them beloved; and, thirdly, he tells them, that the object of both was one and the same, to stir up their-minds to remembrance. And his adverting both to the Prophets of the Old Testament, and to himself and his brother Apostles under the New, shews what a beautiful harmony is in both.
Reader! it is worthy your observation, how much the Apostle’s mind was directed by the Holy Ghost, to admonish the Church of the latter-day heresy, and of heretics. Scufflers are very awful characters. And nothing can more pointedly manifest the bitterness of the heart. The scoffing of men is, in human nature, in correspondence to the hissing of the serpent in his. The devil is the author of both. But we have not simply the sneer, but the contemptuous language of the enemy to contend with. Where is the promise of his coming? Alluding to what Jesus said before his departure. Joh 14:3 . And so blind, and given up to a deluded mind, are such men; that God’s Covenant with the earth, which he made after the destruction by the flood, and which the Lotto frequently alludes to, in confirmation of his Covenant of grace, they pervert to the very reverse of the Lord’s intention. Every man upon earth is this day a living testimony of the former. Gen 8:21-22 . And God makes this an argument for the belief of the latter. See Jer 31:35-36 . with Gen 9:11-15 .
But what I more particularly desire the Reader to notice, in confirmation of this Covenant m Christ, as all along shadowed forth, under every dispensation, and more especially in this of Noah is, that the Holy Ghost, by Peter, refers to it in this very scripture. He expressly declares, that this ark, in which Noah and his family were saved, represented Christ, while the Patriarch and his household represented the Church. And however inattentively regarded by men, and though, according to philosophers, the rainbow may be accounted for on physical principles, yet God, from the first, designed, it as a token of his Covenant. And every child of God ought to regard it as such, upon every renewed occasion, when that beautiful arch is seen by him in the heavens. God saith, that he will took upon it, and remember his everlasting Covenant, and so ought all his people, Gen 9:11-16 . And it is a further inducement for the child of God so to do, not only to bear him up against all the sin and folly of scoffers, but to lead his heart on to the contemplation of Jesus, whom that bow represents, The New Testament Church, in, and through, the ministry of the beloved Apostle, is invited to behold that Rainbow which John saw round about the throne, meaning Christ, Rev 4:3 . And this representation of Jesus was intended to teach, that as it encircled the throne, so that no dispensations can issue from the throne but what must pass through it, neither can any manifestations of God, in all the departments of nature, providence, grace, or glory, come forth, but in, and through Christ. Yea, all the views of Jehovah, with which he beholds his Church, must be in, and through Him. Reader! what a thought is this to refresh the soul of the regenerated child of God, not only against the blasts of ungodly-scoffers, but under all the exercises and trials which the faithful meet.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2Pe 3:4
The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the condition as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened is, in the logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent.
George Eliot, Silas Marner (ch. v.).
References. III. 4. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 292. J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 94. III. 6, 7. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 28a.
The Slowness of God
2Pe 3:8
I. First, let us think of the sphere of nature of this wonderful universe in which God has placed us. Like a scroll upon its bosom this is written, that with the Lord a thousand years are as one day. It was Augustine who said this of God: God is patient because He is eternal. He takes His time because all time is His. There are a thousand years within His day. And that is a lesson we are learning now, with a fulness that was undreamed of once how slow and sure and splendidly persistent God has been in fashioning the world.
II. Think again of the sphere of revelation. Does not that same mark of slowness meet us there? The one thing God has never done, is to be in a hurry to reveal Himself. Suppose you were to ask a child this question, How do you think that God will speak to men? Would not the answer be of sudden voices pealing from the silence of the sky? Well as a matter of fact God has spoken to men, for that is just what we mean by revelation: but His speaking has been as different from that as a strain of music from the din of thunder. Not suddenly, in one stupendous moment, has God declared the riches of His grace. That would have been cruelty and not kindness, for men would have been blinded by the glare. It has been here a little, there a little; one syllable today and one tomorrow, until at last these broken syllables blended in the Incarnate Word.
III. The slowness of God, again, is often manifest in regard to the great matter of our duty. Not all in a moment, but rather step by step, does God reveal the pathway of our duty. Think, for example, of the case of Paul when he was on his missionary journey. First he wished to go southward to Galatia, and the Spirit of God forbade him to go there. Then his heart turned northward to Bithynia: would it not be a joy to preach the Gospel there? But once again his will was crossed, and the Spirit of God suffered him not. We understand to-night why that was so: he was being led to the great hour at Troas. He was travelling to the man of Macedonia, and to the summons from the shore of Europe. But the point to note is that Paul did not know that; nor could he tell why doors were being shut: he could only leave it in the hand of God, who seeth the end from the beginning. How easy it would have been for God to let Paul know why he was being baffled. But it was not thus that heaven dealt with Paul, and it is not so that heaven deals with us. God leads us forward one step at a time, giving us light and strength for that one step, and only as we take it and are strong does He reveal the pathway of our duty.
IV. There is only one other sphere that I would mention, and that is the sphere of judgment upon sin. Sometimes God is very swift in penalty; at other times, inexorably slow. There are sins which instantly condemn a man, and make him a social outcast in a day. They cannot be hidden, and, being cried abroad, they shatter the character and blight the home. But if there be sins that go before to judgment, I think there are far more that follow after, and such sins may track a man for years before at the long last they track him down. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near.
G. H. Morrison, The Return of the Angela, p. 167.
References. III. 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 447. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays after Trinity, p. 419; ibid. Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 68. III. 9. W. M. Sinclair, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 228. III. 10, 11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1126. III. 13. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 257. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p. 329. F. W. Farrar, Everyday Christian Life, pp. 13, 31. III. 13, 14. G. A. Smith, Christian World Pulpit, vol xlviii. p. 232. III. 14. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Peter, p. 224. III. 14, 15. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas to Epiphany, p. 214. III. 15. Ibid. Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, pp. 198, 209, 219. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1997. III. 15, 16. E. J. Hardy, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 83. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 196. III. 16. F. Hastings, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 261. III. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2533. III. 17, 18. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons (2nd Series), p. 149. III. 18. W. S. Stewart, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 236; vol. xlvii. p. 106. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 181. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 427; vol. xlvi. No. 2700. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Peter, p. 234.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
The Longsuffering of God
2Pe 3:9
We wanted some one to say this. It does seem that the Lord is very slow. It is like us to attach small meanings to things. Water cannot rise above its own level: how can the mind get above its own imagination? We needed, therefore, some one to come down as it were with the key to correct us, to take away the little word and put in its place the greater word, saying to us, You ought not to say Slow, you ought to say Longsuffering, patient, forbearing, kind; anything but slow. Apostles who bring us words like these prove their own inspiration. They never take away great words and put little shallow words in their places; then should they disprove their own pretences in the matter of the Apostleship. Whenever the Apostles would take a candle away from us it is that we may open our eyes upon a sun. The gifts of God are descending, expanding, multiplying; they are not dwindling and dwarfing and diminishing, and falling away into an invisible, because infinitesimal, point. Here is a whole heavenful of light. We are liberated from false interpretations, from narrow and ever self-impoverishing constructions, and are made to see that what we thought was slow was beneficent, calculated; that slowness is longsuffering, patience, restraint, hopefulness, the multiplication of chances to men that seem intent upon ruining their lives. We might as well stop here, for we have reaped the whole acreage of Divine love. We may now pull down our barns and build greater, and say to our souls, Fret no more, chafe no more: we thought the Lord was slow, laggardly, tardy, indifferent; and behold, all the while he was patient, forbearing, hopeful, generous, infinite in love: we cannot build storehouses enough to hold such a harvest.
Again and again, as we have seen, the inspired writers come in with the larger meanings. We have seen an instance of this in the words, “It is Christ that died”; scarcely had the Apostle said so when, as if in self-correction, he added, “yea, rather, that is risen again.” Examine the Scriptures in the light of this suggestion, and you will find them ablaze with morning light; look upon your own lives in the light of this suggestion, and the whole outlook is changed as a landscape is changed when the sun burns upon it. No doubt, if we look simply at the surface, things do move slowly: but what do we mean by slowness? Slowness is a term of time; terms of time are unknown in the thought of God. He has given us time as we give a child a watch; he has allowed us to break up the profound flow of his eternity into dates and periods and terms. We have thus been led into false religious reasoning by the tick of our own clock; we have made a pendulum for convenience, for to that use God limited it, and behold we have turned the pendulum itself into an argument in support of atheism. We cannot be trusted with anything. We turn every gift of God into an edged instrument and cut our own fingers with it. The clock is ruining some men. In the hush of eternity there is no tick of time. Whatever else you forget, remember this, that one day, so called by men, is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years is with the Lord as one day. We must take the Lord’s standard before we can judge the Lord’s providence. We cannot understand eternity through the medium of time. We must stand at God’s right hand, and there the devil and his smoking perdition fall into the right perspective. Here is a key; with the use of this key we should be no longer sad; having this key and permission to use it, we should have in our spirits the bound and the joy, the sacred exultancy of eternal youth. The atheist writes his commentary upon the Bible, upon time, upon life, and upon what is called the providential plan. All atheistic comments are little, narrow, shallow; obvious, because superficial; important, because near: with one little speck of dust you could shut out the sun. The atheist refers us to what he calls facts, but his facts are lies; he has nothing to go by but a clock, a watch of his own making, and judging by that he says, How slowly all things go on! If the Lord God be omnipotent why does he not hasten things? Whereas, the true interpretation is, because he is omnipotent he need not be precipitant.
“Not slow… but longsuffering.” He wants men to be saved. He says, Mayhap in another five years they may turn to me and live. Alway there is a priestly voice in the universe saying, Let it alone this year also, and I will try again, and exhaust all my skill upon it, and if I can save this life, well, but give it twelvemonths more, and if at the end of that time it be no better, then thou shalt cut it down. Yet at the end of the twelvemonths that same voice says, Let it alone this year also. Is such reasoning to be debased by the suggestion that the agent is slow? The axe is in his hand, he stands in a threatening attitude, the axe is lifted up on high, but one moment more and the tree is down, and because the priestly voice says, Give it another chance! the atheist says, The Lord is slack concerning his promises and threatenings: if he is going to save the world, he is a long time about it; if he is going to crush the world, he seems to be hesitating a long time. Thus the atheist chatters his frivolity in the very presence of the redeeming beneficence of God. In all things get the right word.
Thus we might say in looking upon the preservation of sinful lives and construing the providence of God in the light of this suggestion, The Lord is not morally indifferent, but longsuffering. The Lord does not look upon the earth saying, Let them do what they please, it is of no consequence to me; my ineffable peace can never be disturbed, riot as they may, slay one another and break the commandments as they may; all the waves of their tumult cannot dash even against the foot of my throne. No such speech does divine love make. The Lord spares the sinner because he wants to save him. “Longsuffering,” simple as it may appear to be, means suffering long: he will suffer another day, if thereby he may save the soul; he will suffer another century, if thereby he can move the earth but one inch nearer heaven. Where do we ever give one another credit for great motives? what wonder then that we should withhold the ascription of great motives to God? If one amongst ourselves does anything great we instantly ascribe a little motive to him: we say, He is ostentatious, he is giving that he may be seen to give, he is praying that he may be heard to pray; he is his own trumpeter; depend upon it his purpose in doing this deed is and then comes some foul suggestion, marked by the selfishness of its own originator. What wonder then that men who thus ascribe poor, shallow, vicious motives to one another, even in the matter of prayer, should treat the court of heaven with contempt, and tell God to his face that he is slow? Whereas the true meaning is, not that he is slow in the sense of moral indifference, but that he is longsuffering in the sense of fatherly patience. Ignorance is hasteful; incompleteness is precipitant. All incompleteness is wanting in repose.
Change the point and view and say, The Lord spares the sinner, not for want of resources, but through longsuffering. He could crush him and throw the refuse away: but this is not the way of God. The Lord is very pitiful and kind, plenteous in mercy and in patience, yea, his mercy endureth for ever, and he continually says, I have no pleasure in the death of the sinner: I would that the wicked might turn from his way. The Living One has pleasure in life: in death he finds no pleasure. We think that sin should be met by instantaneous punishment. That is our little cleverness. The Lord says, I will meet it with longsuffering. The Lord says, I will delay the stroke in the hope that the offender may begin to pray. His very mercy is turned against him; his love is charged with false motives. Yet this is not wonderful let us repeat, because we are always charging one another in the same way, never saying, How noble! always adding the little thought, the mean desire. Truly God is not without resources. The Apostle tells us that he has overflowed the world with water, and he is reserving it for fire, and that all visible things shall be dissolved, shall melt away like wax: but the Lord is keeping up the heavens and the earth that he may save the lost sinner. He keeps the firmament in its place, and all the stars in their courses for another century, that the last obstinate heart may be touched, may surrender its arms, and may turn its rebellion into praise.
This gives us the higher meaning of providence. Providence is not a question of letters and grammatical interpretations: we can only understand God’s Bible, God’s nature, and God’s providence by the larger terms, the fuller, deeper, tenderer suggestions. Let us take this text home with us, and our houses will be furnished from heaven; all things will become new; we shall get rid of the old words, and put new Words, which are yet older, in their places. Thus: the sick man shall say when he is told that he has had many afflictions to bear, No, not afflicted, but chastened. The sick man shall thus become the reprover of his consoler. The consoler thinks he helps the sick man by telling him how deeply he has been afflicted, but the afflicted man who has seen the way of God says, We must drop that word afflicted, we must get rid of it, it is a narrow, superficial word, and in its place we must put the music, chastened, refined, mellowed, ripened. Hand the word afflicted over to the atheists, let them wear that black drapery: the white garment of chastening, sanctification, ripening, belongs to the saints of God. Thus the man who has been pitied as limited and dwarfed, “cribbed, cabined, and confined,” will say, You must take all these words away now; I have outlived them; I am not limited in the sense of being humbled and snubbed, I am adapted; now I see the fitness of things; I have had my ambitions, they have befooled me, they have led me into many excesses and irrational extravagances, and I have always thought that I was about to seize the reins and drive my own chariot: I do not call God’s way towards me a way of limitation, but a way of adaptation; he has told me that I am not fit for the things I once thought myself highly qualified to undertake; he has told me just what he meant when he made me; his purpose has been so revealed to my soul that I see it, and now I can be larger than I ever dreamed of being, but I have to seize that idea of largeness in God’s meaning and use it in God’s way, and now I can do all things through the Christ strengthening idea, through the divine revelation that if I act according to God’s appointment I shall never tire: I tired in an hour when I walked my own way, I came home and complained of weariness; I said, I am growing old, I cannot do what I used to do; whereas all the while I was walking along the wrong road; but the moment I got into the right path I heard a voice from heaven saying, Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail, but they that wait upon the Lord, they that swing in the rhythm of heaven, shall walk and run and leap and fly like eagles, and no sense of weariness shall ever oppress their consciousness. Blessed be God that we soon get tired on the wrong road. A man soon gets tired of opposing gravitation; we soon want to take down the arm that is lifted against the sun. So we shall go into the sick-chamber at home and have a new view; the window will no longer look northward, but southward, with a point of west in it. When our friends are dying, and we say to them, You are quickly disappearing, you are being crushed by the great wheel, the friend will look up and say, Not killed, we must get rid of that word, but liberated: not slow, but longsuffering: not morally indifferent, longsuffering: not without resources, but longsuffering: not afflicted, chastened: not limited, adapted: not killed, released, released!
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XXIV
THE SECOND ADVENT AND THE JUDGMENT
2Pe 3:1-18
We come now to the last chapter of 2 Peter. This chapter is on the second advent and the judgment which follows. 2Pe 2 showed that these false teachers, by their doctrine and their disciples in their lives, held that judgment could not come upon men in this life, if they were Christians, by any kind of bad living, their theory being that sin resided in matter and not in the soul and that one could live just as wickedly as he pleased.
Now, men who hold that theory as to this life are very apt to hold the theory that they will never come into judgment, neither in this world nor in the world to come. They have no faith in the coming of the Judge who will summon them before his bar for a final verdict on the deeds done in the body. Their view of Jesus Christ, that he was just a man and that an eon, or emanation, entered him at birth and left him on the cross, would prevent them from having any true faith in the second advent of our Lord, and as they would not believe in his second coming, they would not believe in the certainty and the eternity of the judgment that would follow his second advent.
Now, that is what Peter is going to meet here. He says that he wants to stir up their sincere minds by putting them in remembrance of words spoken before by the holy prophets of the Old Testament and of the commandments of the Lord and Saviour through their apostles. The Old Testament prophets believed in a judgment to come; the Lord Jesus Christ himself preached a judgment to come, and the apostles of Jesus Christ preached a judgment to come. Peter says, “I want to stir up your minds now to remember that,” and then he gives the reason: “Knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”
In other words, men would mock at the idea of human accountability to God at the second advent; that Jesus is dead and gone and there is no coming back. One may go where he is, but he is not coming back here. And they based their argument what they called a scientific argument on the course of nature, natural law, the succession of events, i.e., “Since the fathers fell asleep everything continues just as it has done since the world was created.” “The order of nature is an argument,” says Hume, “stronger than any miracle.” “The sun rose yesterday and will rise tomorrow as it has been rising every day since the creation, and this idea of the destruction of the material universe is unscientific and you need not be afraid of any such thing as that taking place.”
Now that is what Peter is going to reply to and it is the most masterful argument that I ever heard or ever read. He says, first, that they wilfully forget that the world was created and dry land appeared compacted by the water and yet there did come a cataclysm by which the world that was, perished, a deluge over the whole earth over sixteen hundred years after the creation and those men rebuked Noah, saying, “You talk about the destruction of the world; why since the world was made there has just been a regular succession of events and the ocean has its barriers; ‘here shall thy proud waves be staid,’ and what is the use to try to scare people by talking about a rain? It is unscientific. There can’t be a submersion of the whole world.”
Some foolish people tell us that now; that there can be no such thing as a universal deluge. Peter refers to how there came to be an earth. Everything was in a chaotic, liquid state and God separated the waters, the waters above from the waters below by the firmament, that is, the atmosphere. All water turned into vapor, being lighter than air, rose as clouds and before it turned into vapor it was below the clouds. Now, in that way was brought about the appearance of dry land and God brought it about, by which means he says, being reversed or by a reversal of those means, he could bring about the deluge. If, when he stored up the waters in the seas and gathered the waters above the clouds, causing dry land to appear, by a reversal of that principle he can reduce the whole thing to a liquid mass again and the earth can be submerged as it once was. The whole of the earth was under water originally in the chaotic period.
Now, Peter says that event took place, notwithstanding -the scientific argument based on the law of nature and the continuity of events, i.e., the regular order of events. Peter admits that God promised that it should never any more be destroyed by water, but he says that the word of God that prophesied its destruction by water the first time, prophesied its destruction by fire the second time, and as water was stored up, so that when the time came the windows of heaven were opened and all the water above came down and the fountains of the great deep were broken up and all the waters in the earth’s system rose up and submerged the world, so God has stored up fire for the destruction of the earth the last time. And we have the same word of God for the one as we have for the other, and, as there was a universal deluge of water, so there will be a universal deluge of fire.
He goes on to show that the elements shall melt with fervent heat; that the ocean itself will be an ocean of flame. God has only to make one chemical change and fire will leap at once out of the bosom of the earth and out of the air and out of the water. Now, there is nothing in the word of God that is more abundantly taught than that this earth shall undergo a purgation of fire. The old prophets taught it. Malachi describes how, at the second advent, when the saints are caught up and God gathers his jewels and there is no longer any salt spiritual salt left upon the earth to preserve it, no longer any spiritual light to illuminate its darkness, no longer any missionaries interceding that the wicked may be spared. Just at that instant the whole earth will be wrapped in fire and the wicked shall become ashes under the feet of the righteous and while every living Christian will be changed, every living sinner, at that time, will be burned to death, physical death, but there will be a resurrection. That will be the day that tries by fire.
Now, having affirmed that doctrine he proceeds with his next argument. They say, “Where is the promise of his coming?” They have made their second argument on the time of the second advent. As an Old Testament prophet says, “Because sentence against an evil deed is not speedily executed the hearts of the children of men are set in them to do evil.” Or, as a lawyer tells us, that what gives power to human law is, first, the certainty of punishment and, second, the speediness of it. Now, they apply that thought to a divine judgment. When a man first commits an offense he is a coward, he is afraid of a storm. He thinks, perhaps, God has commissioned some bolt of lightning to strike him. If a leaf falls he thinks it is the footstep of an enemy; if a man comes to meet him, he thinks he comes to bear him evil tidings. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” But after a while when nothing catches him and he just goes on, he begins to draw breath and says, “There is nothing after me. I am all right. Surely if there was a God he would strike a murderer down, he would strike an adulterer down, he would not allow the innocent to be trampled upon,” and he concludes from the tardiness of the second advent, the protracting of the time beyond human expectation, that it is not coming at all.
Now, Peter is going to meet that. He admits that the Lord said he would come quickly, and, that humanly speaking, he has not come quickly. Now what the explanation of it? The explanation is that he will come quickly as God means “quickly,” and not as we understand “quickly.” With God a thousand years are as one day, and one day is as a thousand years. He is not slack about the promise as men count slackness, but there is an explanation of the long-deferred second advent and the general judgment, and he proceeds to give that explanation.
He says that the reason of it is that God willeth not the death of men and desires that all men should come to a knowledge of repentance, and he postpones the day of judgment through his long-suffering, merely to give opportunity for more people to be saved, and that is the construction one must put upon the long-suffering of God. He must count that the longsuffering of God means salvation.
Here he refers to the letters of Paul. He says, “As brother Paul hath written you.” Peter is writing to the Hebrews of the dispersion in Asia Minor and says, “Brother Paul hath written you a letter and as in all of his letters he bears out the view which I am presenting to you) and you must put that construction upon it.”
And how profoundly this is brought out in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews! There Paul says, “Though he tarry) he will come and not tarry.” Because he didn’t come to avenge them of their adversaries, some of them wanted to quit and turn loose. Now Peter quotes Paul and includes all of Paul’s letters, and some of the letters were written to that class of Jews, and one letter most particularly, namely, Hebrews. He says, “Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you,” and he admits that in Paul’s letter there are some things hard to be understood, and we will agree to that, because he was the most profound philosopher of the gospel dispensation. He considered every aspect of salvation. He carried it out from its incipiency in the love of God before the foundation of the world and in the foreknow- ledge, predestination, and election of God to its consummation in glorification, and in dealing with these vast mysteries there are some things hard to be understood, which they that are not steadfast or are unlearned wrest to their own destruction.
For instance, in speaking to the Galatians he said, “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free.” Now, the Antinomian says, “You see that? That means liberty. You are not under bondage to the law. Christ nailed the law to the cross, therefore you can lie and steal and do anything you please.” Now that is wresting the Scriptures to their own destruction. Paul spoke of the second advent to the Thessalonians and they concluded that if that was so, it was not worth while to do any more work, just quit work and deed away all their property. All that anybody would need was about three days’ rations and an ascension robe. So they wrested the Scriptures.
We now come to the most important part of the chapter. He says, in 2Pe 3:10 , “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God.” That is the exhortation and practical application.
But now that climax thought that I referred to 2Pe 3:13 : “But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Paul takes up the same thing in his letter to the Romans. He says, “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now, being made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected the same in hope,” and that on that day of the redemption of our bodies, the earth itself shall be redeemed and out of the fires that burn up the world (not annihilate it any more than the flood annihilated it) there shall come a new world, and new heavens bending above us and upon that new earth no wicked man will ever put his foot and no slimy serpent will leave his trail, but the saints shall inherit the earth and from one end of the earth to the other it shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord and as holy as heaven is holy.
In the book of Revelation we have the account of the condition after the judgment is over, after the fire has taken place. John says, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, as a bride adorned for her husband, coming down,” the redeemed people coming down to the new, purified earth to be the abode of the righteous forever, not that they are to be restricted to living upon the earth, but he means to say that this very earth which has been the abode of wickedness and stained with crimes and whose oceans which have engulfed their thousands and millions shall give up their dead and the earth shall belong to the people of God and the saints shall inherit the earth. God will redeem the physical earth as well as the people upon the earth.
Now he closes this letter by stating: “Therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, beware lest being carried away by the error of the wicked, ye fall from your steadfastness. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” That is one of the greatest texts of the Bible: “Grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Spurgeon, in his sermon on that text, says, “You grow in grace as you grow in knowledge. Every new thing you learn about the grace of God, not theoretically, but in your heart experimentally, and apply it in your life, that knowledge enables you to grow in grace.”
QUESTIONS
1. What the connection between 2Pe 3 and the preceding chapter?
2. What the views of the Gnostic teachers which bear on the second advent of our Lord?
3. What appeal does Peter make here and what the teaching of these different authorities?
4. What reason does he assign?
5. What the argument of the mockers and on what did they base their argument?
6. What Hume’s statement on this point?
7. What Peter’s argument in reply?
8. What theory here advanced as to God’s method of bringing the flood?
9. What the Old Testament testimony on this point?
10. What the second argument of these mockers and on what Old Testament teaching may it be based?
11. How does Peter meet it?
12. What Peter’s reference to Paul here, what the point involved and what does he say of Paul’s writings?
13. Why might we expect Paul’s writings to be hard to understand? Illustrate.
14. What the attending events of the second advent according to Peter here?
15. What his exhortation based thereon?
16. What the climax thought of all this discussion by Peter and what the corroborative testimony of Paul and John?
17. What his second exhortation (2Pe 3:14 )?
18. What his final exhortation, what great sermon cited on it and what the line of thought in it?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
1 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:
Ver. 1. This second epistle ] So must ministers with one sermon peg in another, and never cease beating and repeating the same point, saith St Augustine (de Doct. Christian.), till they perceive by the gesture and countenance of the hearers, that they understand it and are affected with it.
I stir up ] Gr. , I rouse you, who perhaps are nodding with the wise virgins,Mat 25:5Mat 25:5 .
Your pure minds ] Gr. Pure as the sun. Chrysostom saith of some in his time that they were ipso caelo puriores, more pure than the visible heavens; and that they were more like angels than mortals. Hom. lv. in Matt.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
1 .] This Epistle now, beloved, a second, write I unto you (or, “This second Epistle now write I unto you:” but the position of seems rather to shew that the emphasis of the sentence is on it): in which Epistles (E. V. well, “ in both which :” viz. this and the first, implied in ) I stir up your pure (see ref. Phil., note) mind ( is that aspect of the spiritual being of man, in which it is turned towards the outer world; his mind for business and outer interests, guiding him in action: see Beck, Umriss der biblischen Seelenlehre, p. 58. And this may be said to be , when the will and affection being turned to God, it is not obscured by fleshly and selfish regards: the opposite being , Eph 4:18 . It seems impossible to reproduce in English these distinctions; we can only give them a general rendering, and leave all besides for explanatory notes) in reminding (see the same expression and note, ch. 2Pe 1:13 );
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
2Pe 3:1-4 . Prophets and apostles have warned us that delay will lead to denial of the Second Advent .
“I am now writing my second letter to you. In both I seek to rouse you to honest reflection on the words formerly spoken by the holy prophets, and on the commandment of our Lord delivered by your missionaries. Especially realise the truth of their warning, that there will come in the last days scoffers, with scoffing questions, walking after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His appearing? For,’ say they, ‘from the time the fathers fell asleep, everything remains as it has been from the beginning of creation’.”
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
2Pe 3:1 . For with numeral, cf. Joh 21:14 . . Does this refer to 1 Peter? See Introduction, p. 113. : “in both of which,” constructio ad sensum . : cf. 2Pe 1:13 .
: cf. 1Co 5:8 , 2Co 1:12 ; 2Co 2:17 , Phi 1:10 . is a technical philosophic term used by Plato. Phaed. 66 A = “pure reason,” such as the geometer employs. In Phaed. 81 C, is opposed to . . 2 Peter here cannot be acquitted of a confusion in the use of philosophic terms, probably picked up loosely in conversation. At the same time, is also used in the philosophic sense of in Gen 17:17 , Deu 6:5 , Num 15:39 ; also in N.T. Coloss. 2Pe 1:21 , 1Pe 1:13 . is of doubtful etymology, and signilies ethical purity, a mind uncontaminated and unwarped by sensual passion. The opposite state is described in Plato, Phaed. 81, “She thinks nothing true, but what is bodily, and can be touched and seen, and eaten and drunk, and used for men’s lusts”.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
2 Peter Chapter 3
From the humbling and awful indictment of false teachers in 2Pe 2 beginning to play their corrupting part in Christendom, as the false prophets had wrought the ruin of Israel in the past, the apostle turns to speak of this Second Epistle, and its aim in the grace of God. But even so, as we shall soon see, he has to warn of another daring snare to be, and a wholly different class of adversaries.
“This already a second epistle, beloved, I write to you, in both which I stir up your pure mind by putting in remembrance, that ye be mindful of the words spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of the Lord and Saviour [by] your apostles*” (vers. 1, 2).
*The uncials give , the cursives as in the ordinary text It does not Seem that any of the ancient versions support the former. No doubt the peculiarity of the phrase accounts for this. But we may be assured that, as it is overwhelmingly attested. so we do well to receive it, and learn the special ground for the unusual expression. It was a reminder of their near and dear relation to Christians.
The apostle of the circumcision here presents scripture, both O. and N.T., as the grand safeguard, just as the apostle to the nations in his second Epistle to Timothy. Neither has the least thought of apostolic succession; which, if really given of the Lord, might well be regarded as no small stay for beleaguered saints exposed to the worst of perils from misled leaders, and these at work within. But the truth is that the mystery of lawlessness was actively at work from early days, as 2Th 2 informs us. It was restrained by the power of the Spirit, and especially by apostolic energy. But, as the apostle Paul let the Ephesian overseers know (Act 20:29 , Act 20:30 ), his own decease would be the signal for fresh and successful efforts of the enemy. “I know that after my departure there will come in grievous wolves not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall rise up men speaking perverted things to draw away the disciples after them”. What then was the resource? “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all that are sanctified.” Not a hint of a successor, but the assurance to faith of God and the word of His grace.
Just so here our apostle, in view of the danger, and horrors of the false teachers carrying on their nefarious work, casts the Christians from among the dispersed Jews on the words that were spoken before by the holy prophets, and on the commandment of the Lord and Saviour by their apostles. Both the prophets and the apostles were inspired to write as they did; for only by the faith of divine communications are those who believe brought into living relationship with God. Thus His word separates the soul to God, and by the revelation of Christ is the source of their joy and the formative power of obedience. In this faith the elders from Abel downwards obtained witness, whatever the dislike of the world, which was not worthy of them and awaits sure judgment from God. Still the O.T. at best was predictive, and could not make known as the N.T. does the infinite glory and grace of the Saviour, nor the God-glorifying efficacy of His work for our souls, before the salvation of our bodies at His coming again. known eternal life and accomplished redemption give the believers now to walk in the light, as could not be given before Christ came the first time, and renders him as a worshipper once purged to have no more conscience of sins, yea to have the Holy Ghost sealing him, and the earnest of coming glory with Christ as a joint-heir.
These privileges of the believer are the outcome of His actual advent and of the atoning work done and accepted by God, so that His love has been and is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. The First Epistle of Peter makes much known, the Epistles of Paul much more, which could neither be known nor enjoyed as they are since redemption. Thus the commandment of the Lord and Saviour by “your apostles,” while it fulfils the spiritual promises of the O.T., goes far beyond it in the revelation of blessings in and through and with Christ in the heavenly places. Hence Paul refers to the mystery or secret which was kept silent in times everlasting, but now manifested according to the eternal God’s commandment for obedience of faith to all the nations. For, after the cross (which entailed the setting aside of the Jew meanwhile), God set up the rejected Christ above as the Supreme Chief over all things heavenly and earthly, and makes us who now believe (few or Greek), His body and bride, to share all glory with Him at His coming. This glory of the Head and the body over all things is far higher, wider and deeper, than anything in O.T. prophecy; it is the secret now revealed, however little it may be apprehended.
How horrified both the apostles would have been to witness the deadly undermining of the Bible, which, begun by free-thinking men more than a hundred years ago has become a naturalised epidemic, not only in Germany, France and Holland, but now in the English-speaking regions of the earth; growing self-confident, impudent and arrogant beyond measure, not knowing that God has forewarned of this turning away their ears from the truth and readiness of mind for fables. Take their treatment of the Pentateuch in particular, and of such prophets as Isaiah and Daniel. The infinite fact of a divine Person become flesh as truly as He is God is (with very few exceptions, to whom God may give deliverance) as nothing in their eyes, though of infinite value to those who believe and love as they know His love, God’s love, to them.
Christ and His apostles declare that Moses wrote these earlier books. He and they treat the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, not only as genuine and authentic, but as of divine authority. Most are not ashamed to be so intoxicated with the poisonous wine of neo-criticism as to deny the certainty of Christ’s knowledge, and to regard Him and the inspired writings as under the ignorant prejudice of their age, just like themselves at the present time, impiously claiming for themselves superiority of intelligence ranging over the, whole Bible.
Their success, with the youth chiefly of a mocking and scoffing generation, emboldens them to shut their eyes to the iniquity of sitting in judgment, not on copyists who introduced some errata, but on His word which shall judge them. They believe not that the Judge stands before the doors; nor that the secret of lawlessness is in all this working more fatally than in the priestly party who glorify themselves and their leaders with their self-aggrandising legends. For those give God’s written word the lie, and accept as a settled fact that, instead of Moses writing e.g. Genesis, it was really written by a large number of unknown men, fragments interwoven by a compiler, separated by hundreds of years, with perhaps traditionary words of Moses, a priestly document and another quite different and opposed, and only published many centuries after Moses and his successor Joshua. Now even if we do not notice the monstrous perversion of the discovery of the neglected book of the law in Josiah’s day, as if it were a concoction then first palmed on the king and the people, how could such a hodge-podge as all this be the word of God? How blot out the fullest historical proof that Moses wrote as God spoke to him? How get rid of the inspired men from his own day till the O.T. Canon closed? Were these holy men all impostors? Were they, the inspired, more ignorant of divine things, than these infidel reformers?
The faith of saints in all ages fully accepts the O.T. So the Lord taught His disciples, and His hearers generally, as God’s testimony, written by those who claim it and by adequate evidence communicated it. Nor does the expression on which stands the modern fable of the Elohists and Jehovists and the many redactors afford the most slender proof. It is simply the reverie of one who was too ignorant and unbelieving to see the depth of truth in the words for “God (Elohim)” sovereign and historical, and “Jehovah” for His reference to relationship. It is a distinction as real as important, which is lost to such as build on the absurd fancy that it springs from different documents or legends. But infidelity took it up to discredit and destroy God’s authority, as it must if received, as well as deny those whom we have sound evidence to believe really wrote the various hooks as they stand, with few and brief editorial notes at a later day added by similar divine authority.
But here, as in 2Ti 3 , we read how the last words of the two apostles call on the saints to cherish what God has given them, things old and new. Be the corruptions as they may, and however veiled by those who are deceived and deceive by them, we have the inspired word to stir up the “pure mind.” How different from the unbelief that denies real inspiration, and fancies the most incredible tissue of authorship to set aside God’s word searching the reins and hearts! What more blessed than to have such in remembrance? What could we call to mind for profit and comfort compared with the prophets and the apostles as our teachers? It is not those of old only, but “your apostles.” For as one of these wrote, “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not. From this we know the Spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” Solemn word for conscience! ” They (that judge the word of God, the sceptics) are of the world; for this reason they speak [as] of the world, and the world, heareth them. ” O how true is the apostolic word! Even that of old is not enough now without “your apostles.” If the O.T. be Blighted, the N.T. will ere long share the same lot. How awful to become an apostate! Yet the danger is most imminent in our day.
A special reason for heeding the prophets and the apostles follows, which gives urgency to the warning as to those who despise the word of God. For do we not recognise that today is a day of prevalent and growing mockery in Christendom among philosophers and those influenced by their speculations?
“Knowing this first, that in the last of the days mockers shall come with mockery walking according to their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming (or presence)? for from the [day] that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue thus (or, as they were) from beginning of creation” (vers. 3, 4).
The apostle first introduced the formula “Knowing this first” when insisting on the divine source and character, with the certainty and value, of prophecy, even while intimating the still more intimate and elevated nature of the heavenly light and hope of Christianity. “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is (or rather is made to be) of its own interpretation.” It is not an isolated thing, but part of a vast plan for God’s glory in the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Its true and lull interpretation cannot be apart from His future kingdom in displayed glory. As the Fathers counsels look onward to nothing short of this, so the Holy Spirit has moved in the inspiration of the word to this end. Man of himself is quite beneath such ability. Like the gracious power of good which alone could set aside all the evils under which man groaned, and especially the awful weight of Satanic possession, as a testimony before the age to come will enjoy it fully; so prophecy of scripture anticipatively fills the heart and mind of the believer with the mighty beneficence of that day, and His grace and His glory through it come to pass with everlasting Hallelujahs to God. It was therefore in neither case the working or effect of man’s will. Those who wrought the wondrous deeds, or who wrote the no less wondrous words, did so by the power and Jove of God Who alone could qualify them in honour of His Son, the Lamb of God.
So here the repetition of “knowing this first” marks the importance of the truth. It might have seemed that the proclamation of the gospel to all the creation must have disarmed the hostile spirit, even of those who did not believe through pride, pleasure, and lusts of all kinds, to the saving of their souls. But the mind of the flesh is enmity against God. And our Lord :Himself had prepared us for unbelief and self-seeking and defiance of God and His word, as in Israel, so as bad or worse in Christendom. “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, till the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came .and destroyed all. And in like manner as took place in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulphur from heaven, and destroyed all: after this manner shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed.” The subject is wound up in His closing figure: “where the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together” (Luk 17 ). Divine judgment will find its object.
The apostle Paul was given to reveal that lawlessness should come out openly, ,as even from the early days of the gospel it was at work secretly, till (the great Hinderer being removed,) it should culminate in the man of sin, the express opposite of the Man of righteousness, the Saviour from perdition instead of its son; “whose coming is according to the working of Satan in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteousness to them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause God sendeth to them a working of error, that they should believe the falsehood, that all might be judged who believed not the truth but found pleasure in unrighteousness” (2Th 2 ).
No less plain 2Ti 2:3 , and 4, on the growth of haughty unbelief and unrestrained disregard of God in word and deed in the last days, while having a form of piety before even this is finally cast off. The Epistle of James lays bare’ as the beginning of evil, the unjudged creedism which life in Christ was not, and works quite dead and worthless, and instead of love, worldliness, selfishness, and injustice prevailing. 1Pe 4 affirmed the end of all things drawn nigh, and the season for the judgment beginning from or at the house of God, a principle to which He adheres; for as His privileges are there, so also is the special responsibility of those who claim them, though every one shall bear his own burden in God’s moral government. But it is here in the second Epistle and in that of Jude and in the Revelation of John that the marked form of evil professors at the close is fully defined. It is a return to that materialism which abounded in the heathen that knew not God. Here it comes out in the naked infidelity of scoffers who sit in the seat of the scornful.
Scoffing was an evil sign in pagan Greece and Rome. Yet none can wonder that mockers should rise up like Lucian of Samosata when paganism was exposed in its falsehood, emptiness sad demoralisation under the revealed light of God. Again, when the Bible got read at the time of the Reformation, we are not surprised that natural men treated Catholic legends and traditions, and the decrees of the Popes with contempt, any more than that the unhallowed ribaldry broke out before, during, and since the French Revolution, against truth as well as error and fable in divine things. But here we are apprised of a dense dark cloud, far more widely spread, which would shut out the light of heaven, not merely on the gross licentious ways of evil men who taught for gain as in 2Pe 2 , but on others of philosophic mind, who might be generally correct in moral ways, but were beguiled into such an abandonment of truth, as we have already in Agnosticism, Positivism, and the like. They stand on phenomena, on things seen, on matter. God is in none of their thoughts as a living reality, His word (if His word) of no account. Things continue as ever. This is the fixed law. All else is idea. God is, for such, an unknown God. These do not openly hate the name of the Lord Jesus, but like other incredulous men have no words too lofty to express their admiration of His life and ministry and death, quite apart from God’s testimony to their own guilt and dire need to find redemption through His blood. But their dream of human progress is so judged and cut short by His return to judge the quick, that they all unite with open mouth to refuse and decry His return to judge the habitable earth. Hence their description here, as “proceeding according to their lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for from the day that the fathers felt asleep, all things continue thus from beginning of creation.”
This therefore is a distinct and solemn part of Christian testimony: not only the judgment of the wicked dead at the end of the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, but that which will fall suddenly on men “as a thief by night” at the end of the age, while they cry, Peace and safety. The yet more awful judgment of the dead is comparatively distant; and men with little effort but extreme peril can put off all thought till a more convenient season. But for flesh and blood, it is intolerable to hear also of a judgment unsparing and universal to arrest the every-day interests of mankind, when sudden destruction comes upon them, as travail upon her that is with child. And He comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they which pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth shall wail because of Him. Where then will be the rock, the dust, to hide man from Jehovah? For “man’s lofty looks shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men bowed down, and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass away. . . . In that day men shall cast away their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made [each] for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rooks, and into the fissures of the cliffs, from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the glory of His majesty, when He shall arise to terrify the earth” (Isa 2 ).
The corruption of the best is the worst corruption. It was an abomination in Israel. It is the apostasy in Christendom. The counsel of the ungodly in a moment comes to nought. The way of sinners is seen to be everlasting ruin. And what will it be to the seat of the mockers when their mocking is confronted with the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with angels of His power? For He will appear in flaming fire taking vengeance on those that know not God, and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. As they shall pay the penalty of everlasting destruction from the Lord’s presence, and from the glory of His might, so He shall have come to be glorified in His saints and to be wondered at in all that believed in that day (2Th 2 ).
Not only for these the heavenly saints will it be glory with Christ, but times of refreshing, for those who repent and are converted, both in Israel and in the nations on earth, will surely come from the Lord’s presence who sends the Anointed Jesus Who was fore-ordained for His people but now in heaven; but there are times of restoring all things of which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began. So the apostle preached in Act 3 . It is clear therefore that this word leaves no room for expecting the Holy Spirit as now working to bring in those times. The Spirit had just come for the gospel and the church; and He was in no way grieved and hindered and denied as He soon began to be. But ever increasing woes have been singe the apostles. But even then the apostle explicitly looks to God’s sending the Lord Jesus again to bring in the day of earth’s blessedness, and the nations rejoicing with Israel, no longer deaf and dumb, but the loudest in that united and continuous chorus of divine praise. Yet the sword, as we have seen, must inevitably clear the earth before Jehovah, Jah the Saviour, “shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Jehovah, and His name one.”
Then too shall all the universe be put into divine harmony, according to Eph 1:10-12 . For it will then be the administration of the fulness of the fit times: to sum, or head up, all things in the Christ,. the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth: in Him in whom too we were given inheritance, being marked out beforehand according to purpose of Him who worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will, that we should be unto praise of His glory.
We have seen that the Holy Spirit lets us know one special trait of philosophic unbelief at the end of the days of nominal Christianity. Mockers with mocking, proceeding according to their own lusts’ and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? for from the day that the fathers fell asleep all things continue thus from creation’s beginning.”
It is not true. “For this escapeth their notice willingly, that by the word of God heavens were of old, and an earth having its subsistence out of water and through water; by which [waters] the then world being overflowed with water perished” (vers. 5, 6). It is barefaced materialism which the light of Christ ought to have dispelled. Rather did the proclamation of grace encourage these unbelieving speculators to deny that judgment is imminent for living man upon the earth. The Jews were much less incredulous as to it than the nations, and themselves secured as being the seed of Abraham. Blind to their own sins, their prejudices conspired to read clearly what the Prophets wrote on the downfall of the world in general. Yet the Lord had already reversed all thought of immunity for the ungodly, whether Jew or Gentile. He had declared the universality of the judgment which He Himself would indict on the quick. For it is quite distinct from the judgment which awaits all the unbelieving dead whom He will raise for the purpose at the end of His world-kingdom. But the imminence of the judgment on the quick, Christendom has ever been too ready to put off, if not disbelieve, whatever the common creeds may say: what we wish not we readily forget.
The Lord had done more. In His great prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives He had compared this very judgment of the quick to the days of the deluge.
“Watch therefore; for ye know not on what day your Lord doth come.” It may be urged that He has the judgment of the Jews particularly before Him in these words, which manifestly apply not to the Roman siege of Jerusalem any more than to the judgment of the wicked in Rev 19 . But in Luk 17:29 , and following verses, He refers to the days of Lot also, and thus gives it a bearing on the Gentiles too. Again in Luk 21:25-35 He directly refers to the Gentiles also. For which reason He speaks not only of “the fig-tree” but of “all the trees,” and declares that “as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.”
The stability of the earth therefore is a vain defence, even according to their own acquaintance with the known geologic facts from the time that the earth was first brought into being. There is abundant evidence to prove that it has passed through many phases of destruction, followed by renewal in the wise ways of God before man existed, and, in general, progressive in character. But when the earth was made in due time the suited sphere for Adam and his race, moral considerations entered. Not only did the earth become corrupt. and filled with violence, but a new violation of all order was perpetrated as in Gen 6:1 , Gen 6:2 , most abhorrent to God and deeper than any natural depravation, which was the immediate occasion of the deluge. Did these men, wise in their own eyes, never hear of the deluge? Hardly a country on earth but has traditions, more or less true, of that solemn dealing with the whole habitable earth, while God preserved in an ark Noah and his family, as well as of the lower creatures which otherwise had perished in the waters. They are therefore without excuse, for what else than the fact could give rise to a tradition so universal among the races of mankind, North, South, East and West? On their own ground it is irrational to pay no heed to an historical tradition which, though different in shape, was alike in substance over the world, that all things did not remain thus from creation’s beginning. Yet those who find pleasure in slighting God’s word are generally apt to respect relics of the past which have prevailed everywhere.
How then can we account for this slight of so general a report among all the races of men? It is wilful ignorance. “For this willingly escapeth their notice that heavens were of old and an earth having its subsistence out of water and through water by the word of God; by means of which [waters] the then world being overflowed with water perished.” Here we have inspired scripture to set every doubt at rest for those that fear God. The stupendous fact is briefly attested to, the universal destruction of guilty man by the deluge, and this stripped of any local vanity, or of other human accessories; the moral fact is left in all its solemnity. In 1Pe 3 much is made of the exceptional salvation effected by the ark which Noah was prophetically instructed to make; and this is also referred to in 2Pe 2:5 . Here too the catastrophe is cited to overthrow the alleged stability of nature.
But the passage before us is by some applied only to the earth’s primeval constitution, by others to the deluge. It is plain enough that the apostle looks successively at each. The All-wise God had so constituted it in case of need; and as the apostasy of the race required the drastic remedy, He applied it to destroy the old world. Could unbelief be more suicidal than to presume on its impossibility?
Notice the stress laid on the word of God here. The natural system must bend to His will. The fixed laws which even His enemies set up to block Him out of sight and hearing have over and over again bowed to His word, not only in a small sphere but on the largest scale. It may repent Him of His work, when it rebels against Him and He interferes to reprove, punish and destroy. But His word He exalts above all His name. It is the expression of His mind, purpose and love, as well as His majesty in judgment.
With the deluge in the past there is analogy as well as contrast in the future. God is not mocked either way; but abuse of greater privilege will infallibly destroy the proud unbelief of the ungodly in the surest way.
“But the now heavens and the earth by the same word have been stored with fire, being kept for a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (ver. 7).
The gospel is a question of faith, not only in the Son, but in the word of God, beyond whatever was in patriarchal days, or during the law, as well as in coming ages.
The displayed kingdom which the Lord Jesus will establish to His glory for a period longer than man ever attained when he lived longest, or even Christianity in practice, can only be in power where each is sanctified by the Father’s word, which is His word fully and finally revealed. Yet tradition, the great enemy of the word, never wrought in Israel so insidiously and widely and systematically as in Christendom to darken, undermine and pervert God’s word; and that in face of the Lord’s own denunciation in Mat 15 and Mar 7 , or by the words of Isaiah in a more burning indignation as became him.
But now there is a new school of deeper pride which disdains ancient tradition, deifies itself, and idolises the working of man’s mind in history and science, so foreign to the will of God and so dear to the world, even to the length of making it the judge of His written word. A worse or more dangerous form of infidelity there is not nor ever was; it directly leads into the “apostasy” which the apostle of the Gentiles declares must be before the day of the Lord comes in judgment of living mankind. Its success among professors of Christianity intoxicates its votaries so that they are encouraged by its popularity to essay even more daring scepticism.
Here we see that the destruction of the early population of the earth was effected by the vast store of water God provided above and below to overwhelm man and beast save those preserved in the ark with Noah by His command. To this exceeding overflow the language of Gen 7:11 points: “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up,” “and the windows (or, the flood gates) of heaven opened,” as on the other hand that of Gen 8:2 , when the assuagement set in.
Dealing with the outrageous depravity of that age was just when ignorance was as great. But as since the law, Christ’s coming, and the gospel to every creature, have made the responsibility of man immensely greater, so is his sin in rejection of the truth, and professing science, or ideas, that ignore sin as well as grace, and flatter pride in the progress of the first man whilst forgetting his guilt against the Second. How much sorer a doom awaits man, especially the Jew, and most of all Christendom, when treading under foot the Son of God, and treating the blood of the covenant as vain and unclean, and thus insulting the Spirit of grace! Such guilt beyond measure, through rejecting the only and absolutely righteous One and His propitiation, and the full revelation of grace and truth in Him who was true God and perfect man in one person, will have to face God’s extreme punishment by fire. And this is made known in the words of the scripture before us, looking back on man visited of old by a deluge of water. “But the now heavens and the earth by the same word have been stored with fire, being kept for a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”
God has not left Himself without witness on a small scale of what He intends for the punishment of the ungodly who are willingly ignorant of His warning, and of their awful wickedness against His Son and the wondrous proclamation throughout all the world of life eternal and the forgiveness of their sins, through His death on the cross. The very book of Genesis records, not very long after the deluge, the destruction of the cities of the plain because of their enormous impurity, contrary to fallen nature itself. “Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; and overthrew those cities and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities and that which grew upon the ground” (Gen 19:24 , Gen 19:25 ).
Again, in Lev 10 when Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, were so heedless of the favour shown by the coming of fire out from before Jehovah to consume the burnt offering, and slighted it in the service of their own inauguration to the service of the sanctuary by putting common fire for burning the incense, “there went out fire from Jehovah and devoured them, and they died before Jehovah” (ver. 2). Jehovah will be sanctified in those who come nigh Him, and before all the people will He be glorified, as Moses told Aaron; “and Aaron held his peace.” It was not only the ungodly outside who must be shown that He is the witness and the Judge of evil, but those who approach Him cannot trifle with His sanctity save to their cost.
In Num 11:1 , when the people complained instead of acknowledging His justice, He was displeased and the fire of Jehovah burnt among them in the uttermost parts of the camp; and the people cried to Moses who prayed not in vain, and the fire was quenched. But they renewed their murmuring; and Jehovah, though He gave the flesh they lusted after, smote the people with a very great plague. It is Num 16 which sets forth this solemn dealing with the gainsaying of Korah, which the epistle of Jude lets us know as the last and worst of the sinful developments reproduced in Christendom. “Woe to them! because they proceeded in the way of Cain, and were devoted to the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.” For here it was ministry usurping the priesthood, and hence rebellion against the efficacious priesthood, as well as denying the Christian title of nearness to God. And what befell them? “And it came to pass as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground crave asunder that was under them; and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained to Korah and all their goods. They and all that was theirs went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them; and they perished from among the congregation. And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them, for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up. And there came out a fire from Jehovah, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.” This is by no means all that the O.T. offers on the subject, but it is ample for the proof that from the beginning a still more tremendous destruction by fire in a day both at its opening and at its close is plainly revealed as the way in which the wrath of God will be against the ungodly before the great white throne, and the resurrection for judgment described in Rev 20:2-15 .Isa 9:5 and Isa 66:15 , Isa 66:16 , are as clear proofs as 2Th 1:8 , that the day of the Lord will open with fury and destruction on the wicked, discriminatingly and not as a providential judgment.
The phrase “the new heavens and the new earth” is borrowed from 65: 17, Isa 66:22 . But there, it is the principle as applied to Jerusalem and the land in the future kingdom, rather than its full character which follows. This is clear from the prophet’s explanation which indicates its realisation in the chosen land and people, “But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in what I create; for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy, and I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days; for the child shall die a hundred years old; but the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses and inhabit [them], and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree [are] the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they [are] the seed of the blessed of Jehovah, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock; and dust [shall be] the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah.”
It is plain that the prophet sees in the vast change when Messiah reigns in power, the introduction and sure pledge of the new heavens and earth, rather than the absolute fulfilment. Rev 21:1-8 makes this evident and certain; for here is no more an earthly Jerusalem nor a people in flesh such as Isaiah describes; no infant of days to die, no more curse to be executed. Neither will building take place, nor planting; nor again labour however blessed, nor bringing forth for joy any more than trouble. In the eternal scene all will be praise and worship at God’s counsels fulfilled to the utmost, and for the defiance of God its righteous punishment for ever. It is in the future kingdom over the earth that the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and there the lion shall eat straw like the bullock, and there that dust shall be the serpent’s meat as the solitary mark of degradation. But in the full and eternal sense of the new heavens and new earth these creatures are found no more: only the holy city, new Jerusalem, prepared as a bride for her husband, as before the kingdom in power, so after it to all eternity, and outside it redeemed men with it shall tabernacle when God shall tabernacle with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, their God.
These are the two extreme points of view, the prophet of Israel though giving the glorious prospect, dwelling only on its initiatory application to Jerusalem and the land and the people. Equally seasonable is the beloved disciple’s vision, at the end even of the wondrous age and world to come, of the end in its full sense when even a dispensation of glory with the Son of God and Son of man reigning over the universe closes the proof that such a reign fails, as did His coming in the grace of all His humiliation among men to God’s glory, as man left to do his will showed. But He really and everywhere triumphed over the enemy and the race which distrusted God and was misled to everlasting ruin in despising Christ. And the teaching of Peter holds a wide way as became the chief apostle of the circumcision writing to Christians who had been Jews. For he embraces the beginning and the ending of the day of Jehovah as the transition link between Isaiah and John. That such a view is according to the spirit of scripture may be made plain by “new creation” as applied by the apostle Paul in 2Co 5:17 : “so if any one [be] in Christ, [there is] a new creation.” Yet it is but the risen life in the soul. Only when we are changed into conformity to the body of Christ’s glory will it be fulfilled in its entirety.
[Left unfinished by the Author’s death].
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: 2Pe 3:1-7
1This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, 2that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. 3Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, 4and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” 5For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, 6through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. 7But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
2Pe 3:1 “beloved” This term is originally used by God the Father for the Son at His baptism (cf. Mat 3:17) and His transfiguration (cf. Mat 17:5 and 2Pe 1:17). It becomes a title for God’s people (cf. Rom 1:7). It is only used once in 1 Peter (cf. 1Pe 2:11; 1Pe 4:12), but used extensively in 2 Peter 3 (cf. 2Pe 3:1; 2Pe 3:8; 2Pe 3:14-17). It is also very common in 1 and 3 John.
“the second letter” This apparently refers to 1 Peter, if you believe Peter is the source behind both 1 and 2 Peter, which I do.
NASB”sincere minds”
NKJV”your pure minds”
NRSV”your sincere intention”
TEV”your pure thoughts”
NJB”an unclouded understanding”
This term can mean pure in the sense of sincere or morally straight (cf. Php 1:10). The false teachers were not pure in any sense. They were immoral and manipulative self-seekers.
“by way of reminder” These are almost exactly the words of 2Pe 1:13-14 (cf. Jud 1:17). In the Bible humans are often called on to remember God, His Word, and His acts. God, however, is encouraged to forget their sin (i.e., Jer 31:34; Isa 43:25; metaphorical in Psa 103:3; Isa 1:18; Isa 38:17; Isa 44:22; Mic 7:18).
2Pe 3:2 “remember the words” This is an aorist passive infinitive. This is a strong emphasis on knowing (1) the OT (cf. 2Pe 1:21); (2) the words of Jesus (cf. 2Pe 2:21); and (3) and their apostolic application (cf. 2Pe 1:1). This is parallel to Jud 1:17.
The knowing/remembering was meant to affect believer confidence in the Second Coming and their Christlike living!
“spoken beforehand by the holy prophets” This is a perfect passive participle, which implies the permanent revelation (perfect tense, cf. Mat 5:17-19; 1Pe 1:25) given by the Spirit (passive voice, cf. 2Pe 1:20-21).
This refers to all the OT. The Jews believed that all Scripture was written by prophets. This is why Moses is called a prophet in Deu 18:15 and that Joshua through Kings are called the “former prophets.”
“the commandment of the Lord and Savior” This was an idiom referring to the gospel ( “the holy commandment,” cf. 2Pe 2:21; “the commandment,” 1Ti 6:14). It is related to the idiom “the law of Christ” (cf. Gal 6:2).
“your apostles” As prophet gave the first covenant, Apostles give the second!
2Pe 3:3 “know this first of all” This same phrase is used in 2Pe 1:20. Peter uses this literary idiom to mark his main points.
“in the last days” This OT phrase denotes the period of time just before the culmination of human history. Peter is a bit ambiguous as to what time period this refers. In 2 Peter 2, he speaks of false teaching “coming,” yet they are already present in his day. This is theologically similar to John’s “antichrist. . .antichrists” of 1Jn 2:18. These false teachers and mockers will characterize every future period of church history, beginning with the first century. See Special Topic at Mar 13:8.
“mockers will come with their mockings” This is parallel to Jud 1:18. The nominative and instrumental forms of the same noun are used for emphasis. These false teachers were making and will continue to make fun of the biblical promises about Christ’s return (cf. 2Pe 3:4).
“following after their own lusts” The false teachers are obvious because of their words and deeds (cf. Mat 7:15-20 and 2Ti 3:2-5). This is parallel to Jud 1:18.
2Pe 3:4 “where is the promise of His coming” This could refer to (1) the OT Day of YHWH’s Coming or (2) the NT Second Coming of Christ.
NASB, NKJV”the fathers”
NRSV, TEV”our ancestors”
NJB”our Fathers”
The OT period is mentioned in 2Pe 3:2, so “the Fathers” must refer to the OT Patriarchs or tribal leaders. This is confirmed by 2Pe 3:4-6, which speak of creation.
The context clearly refers to God’s visitation in judgment (cf. 2 Peter 2). The OT asserts that humans will one day give an account to God for the stewardship of the gift of life (i.e., Mat 25:31-46; Mat 20:11-15). These mockers not only depreciated Jesus’ incarnation, they also scoffed at His return as Judge.
“fell asleep” This is an OT euphemism for death, which is continued in the NT (cf. Mat 27:53; Mar 5:39; Joh 11:11; 1Co 11:30; 1Co 15:51; Eph 5:14; 1Th 4:14).
“all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation” Human history, though minimal in time compared to geological history, gives humans the sense of regularity. This is the presupposition of modern science (i.e., Uniformitarianism) that natural process and regularity of natural laws can be projected both backward and forward in time. The Bible asserts that there was a beginning to creation and there will be an end. God created with a purpose. That purpose was fellowship with creatures made in His image who reflect His character. The world is accountable to an ethical, moral God. However, the illusion of endless time and the regularity of nature has caused the false teachers to reject the revelation of Scripture, Jesus’ words, and Apostolic proclamation. Human history and individual longevity are long enough to lull humans into a false perception of confidence in a “tomorrow just like today”!
2Pe 3:5
NASB”it escapes their notice”
NKJV”they willfully forget”
NRSV, NJB”they deliberately ignore”
TEV”they purposely ignore”
This term has the connotation of forgetting something or hiding something; therefore, an intent of purposefulness is contained in the term (cf. 2Pe 1:9; 2Pe 3:5; 2Pe 3:8). These false teachers “conveniently forgot” or “chose to ignore” the intervention of God into His creation and His stated intent to all-creation accountability (i.e., judgment).
“by the word of God” This is creation by the spoken word (cf. Gen 1:3; Gen 1:6; Gen 1:8; Gen 1:14; Gen 1:20; Gen 1:24). It is called in theology by the Latin term “fiat,” which means “by means of the spoken word,” see John L. Walter, The Lost World of Genesis One, where he asserts that Genesis 1 is not the creation of matter, but a functioning universe. The Gnostic false teachers denied that a holy God could form, much less, create sinful, coexistent matter.
NASB, TEV”the earth was formed out of water and by water”
NKJV”the earth standing out of water and in the water”
NRSV”and earth was formed out of water and by means of water”
NJB”the earth was formed by the word of God out of water and between the waters”
Water is a significant element in Gen 1:2 ( “the deep” and “the waters”). It is not mentioned as being specifically spoken into existence. The Greek preposition “through” (dia) water can also mean “between,” “circled,” “amidst,” “action of,” or “sustained by” (cf. Psa 24:2; Psa 136:6). This phrase could refer to Gen 1:2; Gen 1:6; or 2Pe 1:9.
2Pe 3:6 “the world was destroyed” This refers to Noah’s flood (cf. Genesis 6-8). I have included a brief note from my commentary on Genesis 1-11.
GENESIS
“There has been some conjecture that the term “flood” may be related to the Assyrian term “to destroy.” Was the flood of Noah’s day world-wide or only in the Ancient Near East? The term “earth” is often translated “land” in a local sense. If humans had not spread out to all the parts of the earth, which is surely implied in the tower of Babel experience of 2 Peter 10-11, then a local flood would have done the job. The best book I have read on the rational evidence for a local flood is Bernard Ramm’s The Christian View of Science and Scripture” (p. 62).
2Pe 3:7
NASB”by His word”
NKJV, NRSV”by the same word”
TEV”by the same command”
NJB”it is the same Word”
As God created by the spoken word and reigns by the word (i.e., Christ, cf. Joh 1:1), we were born again by the living and abiding W ord of God (1Pe 1:23). He will also cleanse by the spoken word (i.e., flood judgment, fire judgment). The metaphor of Jesus in Rev 19:15 as returning with a two-edged sword from His mouth is another way to express this same truth.
“the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire” This is a periphrastic perfect passive participle, which speaks of something that has already occurred. Here it is used in the prophetic sense of the certainty of a future event based on the trustworthiness of God’s word. This entire context emphasizes the power and pre-eminence of God’s word (cf. 2Pe 1:19; 2Pe 3:5; 2Pe 3:7; 1Pe 1:23; 1Pe 2:8; 1Pe 3:1).
This judgment by fire may come from the OT in two senses: (1) the Psalms speak of fire going before the Lord (cf. Psa 18:8; Psa 50:3; Psa 97:3) or (2) the judgments of YHWH in the wilderness wanderings (cf. Lev 10:2; Num 11:1-3; Num 16:35; Num 26:10) or eschatological (cf. Dan 7:10; Isa 30:27; Isa 30:30; Isa 30:33).
Fire often accompanies YHWH’s presence in the OT. This may be associated with (1) God as an agent of knowledge and revelation (light); (2) God as a purifying agent; or (3) God as a judge (i.e., destroying agent).
SPECIAL TOPIC: FIRE
“kept for the day of judgment. . .of ungodly men” This is a present passive participle. Both 2 Peter 2 and Jude have emphasized that evil angels and evil humans are kept for a day of accounting. All conscious creatures (cf. Php 2:9-11) will one day be held accountable as stewards of the gift of life (cf. Gal 6:7).
This eschatological day is a time of judgment for the ungodly, but a time of great reward for believers. The persecuted church needs to remember that one day God will set all things right!
“destruction” We get the English word Apollyon from this word (cf. Rev 9:11).
second. This shows that the epistle is addressed to the same readers as is the first.
beloved. App-135.
unto = to.
which. Plural Hence the insertion of both.
stir up. App-178. See 2Pe 1:13.
pure. See Php 1:1, Php 1:10 (sincere).
minds = mind.
by way of = in.
remembrance. See 2Pe 1:13.
1.] This Epistle now, beloved, a second, write I unto you (or, This second Epistle now write I unto you: but the position of seems rather to shew that the emphasis of the sentence is on it): in which Epistles (E. V. well, in both which: viz. this and the first, implied in ) I stir up your pure (see ref. Phil., note) mind ( is that aspect of the spiritual being of man, in which it is turned towards the outer world; his mind for business and outer interests, guiding him in action: see Beck, Umriss der biblischen Seelenlehre, p. 58. And this may be said to be , when the will and affection being turned to God, it is not obscured by fleshly and selfish regards: the opposite being , Eph 4:18. It seems impossible to reproduce in English these distinctions; we can only give them a general rendering, and leave all besides for explanatory notes) in reminding (see the same expression and note, ch. 2Pe 1:13);
Chapter 3
Now Peter said this second epistle,
Beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles and of the Lord and Saviour: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, who are walking after their own lusts ( 2Pe 3:1-3 ),
So he’s warned us concerning the false teachers that are going to arise. Now in the last days also there will be scoffers, and the scoffers are going to be ridiculing the idea of the coming again of Jesus Christ. They’re going to be,
Saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation ( 2Pe 3:4 ).
That is a very clear articulation of the theory of Uniformitarianism. The theory upon which the evolutionary theory was built. “All things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” Uniformitarianism. So that anything that is happening today or anything that has happened in history can be explained by things that are happening today. There’s a uniform pattern by which things take place and have always taken place from the beginning of creation. And Uniformitarianism really denies any great cataclysmic judgments or changes. And of course, that whole concept was really shaken by Emmanuel Villakosky in his books, Worlds in Collision and Earths in Upheaval. And he gives damning evidence to prove that the whole concept of Uniformitarianism is not valid.
Peter said there will be scoffers who will say, Where is the promise of His coming? Things have just going on as they were from the beginning.
But this they are willingly ignorant of ( 2Pe 3:5 ),
In other words, they had closed their mind to this truth that there has been cataclysmic catastrophes that have happened upon the earth. And one of these cataclysmic catastrophes was the great flood of Noah’s time. And the great flood of Noah’s time gives a far more reasonable explanation of fossils than does the concept that they were gradually laid down over several periods of eons, or geological eras, gradually depositing these various fossil forms in the various geological structures, because we have difficulty in Uniformitarianism showing any development of fossil forms today. Fossils aren’t being formed on the ocean beds today. They had to be formed by some catastrophic cataclysmic upheaval in nature where suddenly a great deal of sediment was laid down quickly under pressure. Fossilize it, setting them within the sediment. You don’t see it happening today.
The flood explains the fossils. But they are willingly ignorant of
that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished ( 2Pe 3:5-6 ):
That God did bring cataclysmic judgment. That God did not stand aloof from His creation. That God did not just start things going and then step back and watched them in their evolutionary development. But that God has had an active hand in His creation and has continued to have an active hand in creation.
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of the judgment and the perdition of ungodly men ( 2Pe 3:7 ).
So God is going to judge the world again. Not with a flood, not with a universal flood; but the next judgment will be a fiery judgment of God upon the earth.
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day ( 2Pe 3:8 ).
In other words, we live in time; God lives outside of time. Time is relative. God outside of time. A day is as a thousand years, a thousand years is as a day. That makes a very interesting look then at Hosea where he speaks about, and I doubt if I can find it real quick. I think it’s the second chapter if I remember. Hosea speaks about in sixth chapter. “Come, and let us return to the LORD: for he is torn, he will heal us; he is smitten, he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us” ( Hos 6:1-2 ).
This is the nation Israel and it’s the voice of the remnant in the last days. “Come, let us return to the Lord, he is torn, he will heal us, he is smitten, he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us. In the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight.” A day is as a thousand years to the Lord. It was just about two thousand years ago that Israel ceased to exist as a nation. Now they are being revived. “After two days he will revive us.” The third day lifted up. A thousand year millennial reign, the kingdom age, when Israel again becomes the center of the world. God governing from Israel. So “a day is as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day.”
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise ( 2Pe 3:9 ),
That is, the promise of the coming again of Jesus Christ.
as some men count slackness; but He’s longsuffering, and He’s not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ( 2Pe 3:9 ).
And so the only reason why God hasn’t already set in motion the rapture of the church and the judgment of the world is His patience and His longsuffering, “He’s not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” And so this is just time that God has given men to get right with Him.
But in the days of Noah, God said, “My Spirit will not always strive with man” ( Gen 6:3 ). There comes a time when even the patience and the longsuffering of God has been expended. And that day of opportunity of grace is over and a person will face the awesome wrath of God. So the scoffers will say, “Where is the promise of His coming?” You know I heard that from the time I was a kid. My grandmother used to and they would scoff at the idea of the coming of Jesus Christ. The rapture of the church. God isn’t slack concerning the promise to come and take us to be with Him. He’s just longsuffering, “He’s not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
But the day of the Lord will come [it will come] as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy manner of living or behavior and godliness ( 2Pe 3:10-11 ),
This old world, this material world, this world of things is all going to burn. It’s all going to be dissolved. If the material world is to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in our behavior and in godliness?
As we look for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, the elements shall melt with a fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for the new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness ( 2Pe 3:12-13 ).
So this whole system is going to be dissolved. But we are looking for the new heaven, the new earth, the eternal kingdom of God.
Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. And just account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation ( 2Pe 3:14-15 );
Just realize that God’s waiting is only allowing more people to be saved.
even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom that was given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all of his letters, speaking in them of the things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable twist, as they do also other scriptures, to their own destruction ( 2Pe 3:15-16 ).
There are always those who are able to take and twist the Scriptures to accommodate the things they want to do. Whenever you twist the Scriptures to accommodate the level upon which you want to live, and if you decided to live on a low level and you try now to twist the Scriptures to accommodate that level, you are twisting them to your own destruction.
Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But [in contrast] grow in grace, and in the knowledge ( 2Pe 3:17-18 )
Going back now to chapter one, the whole idea was the knowledge of God, the knowledge of Jesus our Lord. So “grow in grace, and in the knowledge”
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen ( 2Pe 3:18 ).
Next week we start the first epistle of John. There are three reasons, four reasons why John wrote this epistle. I want you to find all four. There are six places where John points to Jesus as our example, “As He,” “Even is He.” I want you to find all six. There are seven false professions that man makes. “If a man says.” “If a man say.” I want you to find all seven. There are eight places whereby John tells us how we know what we know. “Hereby we perceive.” “Hereby we know.” I want you to find how you know what you know. False professions men make; Jesus our example; and the reasons why John wrote the epistle. So you would have to study it carefully to find out these things. I hope you have to read it at least twenty times to get them. Okay, you got those things now?
All right, the reasons why he wrote it. He tells you. “These things write we unto you.” And he tells you why he writes them. And then he talks about Jesus, “As He,” or “Even as He.” Six examples of Christ where He is our example. Seven places where people make false professions, A man says one thing, he’s doing another. And then how we know what we know. For extra credit, he uses the word “know” I think thirty-nine times. If you go in the Greek I think forty-one, but translated “know” thirty-nine times. However, there are two Greek words: one is “ginosko”, which is to know by experience.
I may say to you “that stove plate is hot”. How do I know? I got a blister on my finger. I “ginosko”. I know by experience. I may say, “I know I’m right”. How do you know you’re right? I just feel it. That’s knowledge by intuition. That’s another Greek word, “eido”. I know a lot of things spiritually by intuition or the Holy Spirit has put the knowledge in my heart. I haven’t yet experienced it but I know it because of the intuition of the Holy Spirit within my heart, other things I know by experience. We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. I’ve experienced this transformation and it’s proved by my love for the brethren.
Now without knowing Greek, figure out in its context whether it’s the Greek word “ginosko”, knowledge by experience or “eido”, knowledge by spiritual intuition or by the Holy Spirit. You’ll find that that will be an extremely fascinating study. I would be curious as to how many of them you get right. I would say that you’ll get a lot more right than what you think. As you have to think it out, though. If you think it out, you can see. Oh yeah, yeah, that’s right. It’s sort of like a driver’s license test; it just takes some just common sense, stopping and figuring it out.
So that’s extra credit. First John, we’ll get started with it next week. Don’t guarantee how far we’ll go. We’ll just get started. But I can promise you some very fascinating things are going to happen in your life as you study this book. I’ll tell you the things that are going to happen next week.
May the Lord bless you and cause you to grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May you increase in your understanding and knowledge of Him. May you be freed from that power of darkness, the corruption that is in the world through lust. And may you grow up in Him in all things, and strengthened. And may you increase day by day in His richness, in His love, in His grace, in His word. In Jesus’ name. “
2Pe 3:1-3. This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up pour pure minds by way of remembrance: that ye may be mindful of the words which. were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: knowing this first that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
This prophecy is most certainly being fulfilled in these days.
2Pe 3:4. And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the father fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
Inviolable laws still govern the material creation. Men are still swift to sin. Oppressors are not overthrown; and, oftentimes, the good are left to languish in poverty and suffering. Where is the promise of his coming?
2Pe 3:5. For this they willingly are ignorant of,
Ignorant that there has been one great interposition of God to avenge the insults to his holy law, and to overturn the rule of sin: For this they willingly are ignorant of,
2Pe 3:5-6. That by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
God did destroy man, and sweep away sin, with water once.
2Pe 3:7. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
There will come a second interposition; we know not when, but assuredly it shall come; and if the visitation tarry, we must wait for it; for it shall come, it shall not really tarry, however long it may seem to be delayed.
2Pe 3:8. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
There are no years to him; there are no days to the great Ancient of days. A thousand years must seem to be a mere speck in comparison with his everlasting existence, as a dream when one awaketh, it has swiftly passed away; but God still remaineth.
2Pe 3:9. The Lord in not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Therefore does he wait. If men ask why there is no interposition of wrath to overthrow the ungodly, the answer is, because this is part of Gods great reign of love. He waits, because he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; yet there will be a limit even to his patience.
2Pe 3:10. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the eight; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
The next and great judgment will be by fire.
2Pe 3:11-12. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ?
This should be the practical outcome of the anticipation of coming judgment. Let us look on all these things as passing away.
2Pe 3:13. Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
The end of this world will be the beginning of a new and better one, of which righteousness will be the great characteristic.
2Pe 3:14. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.
There is, again, the practical note.
2Pe 3:15-16. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
The Scriptures are given for our learning; and, rightly used, guide us to the Saviour; yet, alas! some wrest them unto their own destruction. Let none of us ever be found committing such fatal folly as that.
2Pe 3:17-18. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
I should like to point out to young Christians, and to all Christian people, how Peter finishes this Epistle, first with a warning and then with a counsel. He says, Beware lest ye be led away, and then he puts in a but but grow in grace. If you go into a plantation, at a certain time of the year, you may see a great number of trees that have no leaves upon them; how are you to know which are alive, and which are not? Well, you would soon know if you could look at their roots. If a tree has been growing, if its roots have taken hold upon the soil, you may pall it, but you will not stir it. There it stands; and, in likemanner, growth in grace brings fixity in grace. You who have faith, pray God that you may have growing faith. A living faith is a growing faith, and a growing faith is a living faith. Pray, therefore, that you may grow in grace.
This exposition consisted of readings from Act 3:11-26; Act 4:1-4; and 2 Peter 3
2Pe 3:1. , now) Therefore he had lately written the former Epistle. The seven Canonical Epistles were written by the apostles shortly before their death. While they still remained alive, they had judged that it was less needful for them to write.-, in which) (plural). Syllepsis.[13] The meaning is, in which (second Epistle), as in the former Epistle.- , by reminding you) ch. 2Pe 1:12. Ye already know, 2Pe 3:3; it is only needful that I should remind you: Jud 1:5.-, sincere) adulterated with no error.
[13] See Append. on this figure.
2Pe 3:1-13
SECTION THREE
THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD
AND THE END OF THE WORLD
2Pe 3:1-13
1 This is now, beloved, the second epistle that I write unto you; –Literally rendered, the Greek text here is, “This already (ede) a second epistle I am writing to you.” In the use of the word “already” (ede) rendered “now” in the translation, there is the suggestion that the second epistle came soon after the first. From this it appears that (a) Peter had written an earlier epistle shortly before this; and (b) it had been addressed to the same readers. In pursuing his design to expose the pretentions of the false teachers so minutely dealt with in chapter two, he calls attention here, and in the succeeding verses, to the mockery characteristic of all such in denying the coming of the Lord merely because it was delayed. The vocative “beloved”–a term of endearment –occurs four times in this chapter and indicates the intimate connection which Peter sustained to these addressed.
And in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance; –Both of the epistles were, therefore, written for the same purpose: to stir up the minds of his readers by putting them in remembrance of the vital and fundamental matters with which the chapter particularly, and both epistles generally, deal. Repeated here is the thought which occurs in 2Pe 1:13. The word “stir” (diegeiro) means thoroughly to arouse; and the adjective “sincere” (eilikrines), occurring also in Php 1:10, denotes that which is clear, open, candid. The minds (understanding) of these to whom Peter wrote were open and reasonable; and he addressed them with the view of arousing them to a recollection of matters that had been taught them but which they might have, for the time, forgotten. What these matters were he reveals in the verse which follows.
2 That ye should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandments of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles:–“That ye should remember” is translated from one Greek word mnesthenai, aorist passive infinitive of mimnesko, to remind signifying, as in the King James’ Version, “That ye should be mindful.” The things which Peter would have them recall were the principles, the prophecy, the truth, and the doctrine which the apostles and prophets had taught them. The association of “prophets” and “apostles” here makes it likely that the New Testament prophets who had spoken of the coming of the Lord were included, and that the combination is similar to that which occurs in the epistles of Paul. (Eph 2:20; Eph 3:5; Eph 4:11. Cf. Act 11:27; Act 13:1; 1Co 14:29.) Much emphasis is given to prophecy and to prophetic statements in the epistles of Peter. (1Pe 1:10-12; 2Pe 1:19.) It should be recalled that at the time when Peter wrote the New Testament revelation had not been completed; and unable to appeal to it as a final and complete body of truth in the matters under consideration, it was necessary for him to direct his readers to the announcements of the prophets and to the oral deliverances of the apostles. The reference to “your” apostles is significant; they could properly and fittingly be styled the apostles of those to whom they had written or spoken. Peter was included among those thus designated; and also Paul, Peter’s readers being acquainted with certain of that apostle’s writings. (2Pe 3:15.) The “commandment” was “of the Lord” in that it originated with him, and “through” the apostles in that they were the instruments by which it was borne to the people.
It is equally important that the Lord’s people today should have their minds stirred to remembrance of the vital teaching issuing from the apostles and prophets of the Lord. Ceaseless vigilance is the price of a pure faith and a faultless practice, and the obligation of all teachers and preachers in this matter is indeed weighty. Remissness in this respect leads to eventual apostasy.
3 Knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts,–“Knowing this first,” i.e., recognize this fact in the beginning. See comments on 2Pe 1:20, where the same phrase occurs. “The last days” embrace the period of the Christian dispensation –the final age of the world. In the words “mockers shall come with mockery” there is a play on the word empaizo, to sport, play, jest, or deride (empaigmonei empaikai). The meaning is that these men would ridicule and hold up to contempt the idea that the Lord would return, and that his return would signal the consummation of the age. This, to them, provided an occasion for mocking and jesting; the idea they ridiculed, and the prophecy they held up to scorn. In doing so, they were but “walking after their own lusts,” thus revealing that this was the real cause of their cynicism and doubt. “And this is the judgment that light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light ; for their works were evil.” (Joh 3:19.)
4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.–These mockers insinuated that the promise of the Lord’s coming was a delusion, and the expectation thereof a vain hope. The Lord had promised it (Mat 24:3 ff); Paul frequently alluded to it (1Co 15:51 ; 2Co 5:4); and Peter taught it (2Pe 1:16). Yet, the Lord had not come; and scoffers were pointing to this fact as proof that he never would appear. From the day the “fathers fell asleep” (died) all things continued as they had from the beginning. The “fathers” to whom they referred were evidently the first generation of Christians, many of whom by now had died. These had passed without witnessing the Lord’s return, the natural order of the seasons, seedtime and harvest; the usual continuity of things were as they had been from the beginning. Why, then, should such a radical change be expected as would attend an event of the type predicted. Likely there were many such questions, this being representative of the type propounded. It is possible that some of the Christians of this period inadvertently supplied these scoffers with an occasion for such objections. Some of the saints of the first century entertained erroneous views regarding the time and nature of the Lord’s return. To correct the impression that Christ would appear immediately, portions of the Thessalonian letters were written. (1Th 4:13-18; 1Th 5:13; 2Th 2:1-7.) The question these mockers raised may, in view of these facts, have implied this: The return of Christ has been widely predicted and confidently expected. The fathers with anxious anticipation awaited it. They lived to old age and in the natural order of events died without its realization. Since their departure all things continue as before. Since they were disappointed in his coming, why should we, with no better basis of hope, expect it?
These cavilers were the uniformitarians of the day, the proto-type of those who deny any divine superintendency in the universe today. They argued that that which is, is because it has ever been, and must, therefore, ever be.
The reference to the fathers falling asleep as a figure of death is a reminder of the words of the Lord regarding Lazarus: “Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. The disciples therefore said unto him, Lord, if he is fallen asleep, he will recover. Now Jesus had spoken of his death:but they thought that he spake of taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus therefore said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.” (Joh 11:11-13.) The figure is a common one in the scripture. The rest from labor that death involves, the peaceful aspect of those in death, and the position of the body, all symbolize death. In our English word “cemetery” (from koimeterion, a sleeping place) the idea is preserved.
5 For this they wilfully forget,–Here, Peter begins his reply to those who alleged that the uniformity of nature constituted an argument against such a change as the return of Christ would necessitate. He pointed out that in reaching such a conclusion they had disregarded important facts relevant to the issue. These facts they had not only ignored, they had done so willfully and deliberately. The word “forget” in the text is from lanthano, to escape the notice of, to be hidden from. That these facts had escaped them was not due to inadvertency; they had willfully and purposely allowed them to pass. The word “wilfully” is from thelontas, present active participle of thelo, to wish or will. Their ignorance of these matters was, therefore, designed and willful; a guilty lack of information of the matters involved. Far from an unvarying constancy in nature from the beginning, as these men had alleged, the most radical changes had occurred, an instance of which the apostle next introduces.
That there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God;–The “heavens were from of old,” i.e., they dated from the original creation. (Gen 1:1-3.) The earth was “compacted” (formed) out of water, and in the midst of water, being separated from the waters. “And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. . . . And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas.” (Gen 1:7-10.) All of this was accomplished by “the word of God.” (Cf. “And God said . . .” Gen 1:6 ff.)
6 By Which means the world that then was, being over-flowed with water, perished:–“By which means,” i.e., by the waters which were above the firmament and those under it–the waters out of which the earth was formed. The earth was formed by the separation of the waters; it was kept together (compacted) by such a separation; and it was at length destroyed when this separation was no longer maintained. In the deluge “were all the fountains of the great deep broken up” (the waters from below), and “the windows of heaven (from above) were opened.” (Gen. :11.) The waters from above and below joined as instruments in the hands of God in the judgment upon the wicked world. It thus “perished” (apollumi), i.e., it was destroyed. It was not annihilated, for such the word does not mean. The existing order was changed the evils of the age were removed, and there emerged a new world cleansed from its former impurities.
7 But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.–The “heavens that now are, and the earth” are put in contrast with “the world that then was” in verse 6. As “the world that then was” suffered destruction in the flood, “by the word of God,” so the present heavens and earth, by the same word (and thus by the same limitless and inexhaustible power which accomplished the destruction of the world in the flood), have been stored up (literally, treasured, preserved, kept) for fire, i.e., for destruction by fire, at the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. In this latter clause the word “destruction” is identical in meaning with the verb “perished” in the preceding verse. By this it is not meant that the ungodly will cease to exist, any more than the earth, following the flood, existed no more. What is meant is that there will be a change in their condition attended by penal consequences as great as that which characterized the earth in the flood. Paul reveals that the destruction of wicked men will be accomplished “at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints . . .” (2Th 1:7-10.)
8 But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.–The apostle’s first reply to the scoffers who alleged an unvarying conformity in nature as an argument against the Lord’s return (verses 3-7) is that they had willfully and deliberately ignored the lessons of the flood which demonstrate conclusively that all things have not continued as they were from the beginning. His second answer to their allegations is that lapse of time between the promise and the realization is not to be interpreted as meaning that God will not fulfill his commitments and discharge his threatenings. “But forget not this one thing” is, literally rendered, “let not this one thing escape you,” i.e., be primarily impressed with the fact that with the Lord “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” “With the Lord” signifies the manner in which the Lord regards time. With him, a thousand years is as a day; a day is as a thousand years. This does not mean that a day in “God’s calendar” is a thousand years long, as materialists allege, or that God will punish the wicked a thousand years for every day they have sinned in this life, as some affirm. The meaning is that the passing of time does not affect the promises and threatenings of God. Whether it be a day or a thousand years between the time of the promise and the reward, the threatening and the retribution, God will perform it. In this he is wholly unlike man, who the greater the interval between the promise and the fulfillment, the less likely that he will accomplish it. There are many reasons why this is so. (1) Man may die; (2) he may forget his promise; (3) he may violate his word and simply refuse to do that which he promised (4) conditions may arise making it impossible for him to perform it. Since none of these contingencies are ever characteristic of God, it is idle for the wicked to infer that apparent delay in the execution of the penalty is evidence that God has forgotten. (Psa 90:4.)
9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to youward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.–A third answer to the scoffers earlier alluded to begins here, an admonition to them to make good use of what they allege is delay by making their own calling and election sure. God does not loiter or delay in the discharge of his purposes; that which unbelief may regard as such is simply the normal development of the will of God which conceived the operation and now works it leisurely out. The words “is not slack concerning his promise” reveal not only that there is no indifference involved, but also that there will be no tardiness in the ultimate accomplishment thereof. The purpose in the apparent delay is to exhibit God’s longsuffering, a characteristic they were ironically perverting into an argument against the truth of his word. The scriptures abound with evidences of God’s longsuffering. (Rom. 11:11-36 12:1.) Far from desiring that any should perish, he longs for all to come (move on to, choresai) repentance. Any theory which teaches that God does not will the salvation of all men is therefore palpably false.
10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; –The verb “will come” is in emphatic position in the Greek text; whatever else occurs, coming surely is the Lord. The “day of the Lord” is the day when he shall appear in the clouds on the occasion of his second coming for the purpose of raising the dead and instituting the general judgment. (Joh 5:28-29.) The phrase is of frequent occurrence in the Old Testament, where it usually denotes the idea of judgment; and in the New Testament it designates the Lord’s coming which will precede the judgment. (1Th 5:2; 1Co 1:8; Php 1:6; 2Th 2:2.) The day will come as a “thief” because it will come with the suddenness and unexpectedness characteristic of a thief. The figure was first used by the Lord (Mat 24:43-44, a passage which must surely have been in Peter’s mind when he wrote these words), and Paul and John used it in similar fashion (2 Thess. 5; 2; Rev 3:3).
In the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat,–The “heavens” here include the visible portion of the universe immediately above us in which the birds fly. (Gen 1:20.) In the mighty conflagration which shall attend the destruction of the earth great and wonderful changes are destined to occur in the elements immediately surrounding it. Accompanying its dissolution there is to be “a great noise.” The word thus translated is rhoizedon, an onomatopoeic term, in which the sound denotes the meaning. Its kindred noun, rhoidsos, was used in classical Greek of the whizzing of an arrow, the whirring rush of wings, the sound of the wind, and the murmur of waters. Here it describes the crash of dissolving worlds and the tremendous roar of flames as they consume the earth. The “elements” are the rudimental portions of the earth system, the minute parts which comprise the whole. The heavens and the earth are to be dissolved; they are to lose their form and be returned to the original atoms from which they were constructed, all of which sprang into existence in the divine fiat of the omniponent God.
And the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.–The works that are to perish in the fire which shall ultimately destroy the earth are those which belong to the earth and are characteristic of it, whether of God or man. Along with its dissolution there will be the burning of all that man has accomplished of a material nature–houses, cities, monuments, etc. –everything to which he has set his hand here. These, along with all of God’s material creation, are to be dissolved, consumed in the heat of the mighty catastrophe. The manner in which the Lord will accomplish this is not stated, and it is idle to speculate. It is sufficient for us to know that it will occur; the manner in which the Lord purposes to do it remains hidden in the counsel of his own will.
11 Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness,–An admonition based on preceding premises. The Greek term translated “what manner of persons” is, literally, “of what country,” thus emphasizing Paul’s reminder that Christians are citizens of the colony of heaven (Php 3:20), and they ought therefore to remember always that they are merely strangers and sojourners here (Heb 11:13-16). The verb in the phrase “ought ye to be” denotes continuous being, and might properly be translated, “ought ye to be found,” i.e., found constantly engaging in all holy living and godliness. These words-living and godliness –are, in the Greek text, plurals, livings and godlinesses. They thus sum up all the duties and characteristics of Christians. In view of the transitory nature of the world and all that belongs to it, children of God should cease their concern about it and fix their attention on those matters that are eternal. “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2Co 4:18.)
12 Looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ?–The faithful are to look forward to, and earnestly desire, the coming of the day of God, because it will signal the end of earthly trials here and betoken the ushering in of the eternal and blissful state for which they sigh. “Earnestly desiring” (spendontas) is “hasting unto” in the King James Version. There is no ground for the introduction of the preposition “unto.” It is, however, possible to render speudontas, transitively, i.e., “hastening on,” causing the day of God to come more quickly by helping to accomplish the things which must occur before it dawns. Christians are, therefore, not only to desire the Lord’s return, but to hurry it on by performing their duties faithfully in his kingdom. It will be by “reason of his” coming that the destruction already described in verse 10 will occur.
13 But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.–The promise of a new heaven and a new earth is in Isa 65:17; Isa 66:22. John had a vision of it which he describes in Rev 21:1. The “heavens and earth” to which Peter refers here is described as “new.” There are two words translated “new” in the New Testament; one is prospective and indicates that which is young as opposed to old; the other is retrospective and points to that which is fresh in contrast to that which is worn out. It is the second of these (kainos) which is used here. The heavens and the earth which the apostle describes in this passage will be fresh and new, and not worn and old, as are the heavens and the earth which now exist. In this new heaven and earth righteousness will dwell. Righteousness dwells wherever righteous people live. The heavens and the earth here contemplated will, therefore, be the abode of righteous and obedient people.
More than this we cannot, with our present store of information, know. Numerous questions men are disposed to raise regarding the matter it was not Peter’s intention (or, for that matter, any inspired man’s) to answer. Where will the new heaven and earth be located? What will be the nature and characteristics of it? are questions beyond our ken. It is sufficient for us to note that: (a) The new heaven and earth will follow the destruction of the present heavens and earth. (b) The earth that will then be is not this one. (1) It is this earth which embodies the hopes and expectations of future kingdom advocates. (d) There is no hint of a reign of Christ on the earth which Peter describes. (e) Christ will have terminated his reign and delivered the kingdom to the Father before the events are accomplished which the apostle here details. (1Co 15:23 ff.) (f) There is, therefore, no support whatsoever in this passage for the premillennial theory.
From a careful consideration of the matters set forth in the foregoing passage, these facts seem to appear: (a) The present heavens and earth serve as a figure of the heavens and earth to (b) The words “heavens and earth” are not intended to embrace all of God’s material universe, but only that portion where his people dwell. (c) In the antetype, this limitation must be understood, and the words “new heaven and earth” must then be regarded as a designation of where his people dwell, and not a detailed description of the future abode. (d) Heaven is the final abode of the people of God. (e) Therefore, the phrase “new heavens and earth” must be understood as a designation for heaven!
False teaching which denies the power of Christ issues in false thinking which denies the Coming of Christ. There will be mockers who will walk in lust and make sport of the great hope of the Church, declaring that things will ever continue as they have continued. To strengthen his readers against this peril, the apostle reminded them of the prophecies, and the commandment of the Lord, and said further that what appears to be delay is due to the long-suffering of God, with whom time does not exist.
The day of the Lord will come. It will be destructive. It will be constructive. We may hasten that day by holy living and godliness. The results of this knowledge should be diligence to create the character for which He will seek, to create it by loyalty to His Lordship, and patience during the delay.
The final exhortation is twofold. “Beware.” To be forewarned is indeed to be forearmed. The certainty of the truth of the things of Christ will enable the trusting soul to detect error and to produce a carefulness and steadfastness in life. That marks the attitude of caution. “Growl” Standing in grace and knowledge the soul is in the soil and atmosphere for development. Let there be growth by response to these things. Growth is the condition of increasing strength and abiding steadfastness.
The writer ends with a brief and comprehensive doxology of glory to the Lord and Saviour in the present and the future; that is, in response to His power, and by way of His Coming. The soul is established against all possibilities of perils in Him both now and forever.
Longsuffering Delay
2Pe 3:1-9
Peter does not hesitate to place the commandments of himself and the other Apostles of Jesus on a level with the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and he repeats his admonitions because of the urgency of the crisis then threatening the Church. Apparently there was a well-grounded fear that she would relax her attitude of expectancy and give credence to the materialistic philosophy of the age.
Men argued then from the appearances of things, and especially from the regular routine of cause and effect. They did not realize that, from time to time, there had been the intrusion of the divine personal will into the course of history, introducing a higher set of laws and arresting the ordinary succession of events; as for instance, the Flood and the miracles of Old Testament history. Why, then, should not the ordinary course of nature be broken in upon by the Second Advent, when the Lord shall gather His saints about Him and reign gloriously? What God has done He can do again! There is a person and a will behind the slight veil of the present life.
Chapter Three – Looking On To The Culmination
As Peter looked forward to the day when he should seal his own testimony for Christ by laying down his life, as the Lord had foretold, he was the more anxious to arouse the saints generally to the importance of maintaining their confidence in what God had revealed concerning the prophetic future, or as we say, the last things. He had already reminded those to whom he wrote that prophecy is a lamp to lighten the pilgrim alone the dark road as he pursues his way through this world to the Canaan rest which will be his at the end of the journey.
Now Peter stresses the importance of keeping the testimony of the prophets and apostles in mind, when many will spurn them entirely.
Forgetting The Past And Denying The Future
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men(2Pe 3:1-7).
In writing this Second Letter, guided by the Spirit of God, Peter was not endeavoring so much to open up new vistas of truth as to stir up the minds of the saints to the tremendous importance of keeping in memory what they had learned already. The words which were spoken in Old Testament times by the holy prophets, and the additional revelations communicated through the apostles of the new dispensation, should never be forgotten. Peter himself wrote as one of the latter group, having been definitely commissioned as an apostle by the Lord Jesus, and recognized by his brethren as being peculiarly adapted to make known the gospel to the Jews. When Paul tells us in the Epistle to the Galatians that the brethren at Jerusalem acknowledged that the gospel of the uncircumcision had been committed to him as that of the circumcision had been committed to Peter (Gal 2:7) we are not to suppose that he meant thereby that there was any fundamental difference in the messages themselves. It was rather that God had fitted Paul in a very definite way to carry the gospel to the Gentiles; whereas Peter was more adapted to minister the Word of grace to the Jews. As a result of his ministry many of the dispersion had been brought to know the Lord. And in obedience to the command given Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee he undertook to feed these sheep and lambs of Christs flock both by word of mouth and in these Epistles. He puts before them, therefore, in the strongest possible way the necessity of keeping in mind the Holy Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament had been complete for centuries, but the New Testament was not yet complete; nevertheless many of its books were in circulation already, and among them were all the Epistles of Paul, as we shall see later in considering the closing verses of this same chapter. Recognizing in these books the testimony of God Himself who, by the Holy Spirit, had inspired the human authorship of each portion of the Word, Peter urges the saints not to neglect the Scriptures but ever keep them in their hearts, in order that they may shed light not only on the present pathway but also on the future to which they were hastening. It had been predicted again and again by both prophets and apostles that in the last days there would be those who would utterly repudiate the truth of a divine revelation as to the return of the Lord. These scoffers would hate the truth because it interfered with their own selfish desires, and would sneer at the very possibility of the second advent of the Saviour. That of which Peter spoke as being in the future and as that which would be manifested in the last days we now see fully developed all around us. Everywhere we find men walking after their own ungodly lusts, deriding the doctrine of the imminent return of the Lord as though it were something utterly ridiculous and not to be considered for a moment by sober-minded people. Even in the pulpits of professedly orthodox churches there are many ministers today who take this stand, either denying that the Bible itself teaches the second coming of Christ, or else maintaining that even though predicted by Christ and taught by His apostles, it is all to be looked upon as an idle dream. These men ask contemptuously, Where is the promise of His coming? They declare that since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation-that is, they insist that there is no evidence whatever in the history of the past or in conditions prevailing at the present time that indicate the fulfilment of any prophetic declarations. Though wise as to the things of this world, they are absolutely ignorant of the signs of the times-signs which spiritually-minded and godly men discern readily, but which these carnal and sensual leaders of religious thought ignore completely. As in the days before the flood the men of Noahs day refused to give credence to the testimony of the Lord in regard to a coming judgment and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so will it be with many in this generation who contemptuously discard all that Scripture teaches in regard to the coming day of the Lord; while all the time the world is rushing forward into the fearful vortex of that day of wrath.
Many have forgotten that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. The men who lived in antediluvian times said unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways (Job 21:14). As Eliphaz reminded Job when he said, Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden? which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood: which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them? Yet He filled their houses with good things: but the counsel of the wicked is far from Me (Job 22:15-18). So it will be with many in this age. They are willingly ignorant of Gods dealings with men in the past, and therefore refuse to believe in any predictions of judgments to come.
There is something very striking in the expression, Kept in store, reserved unto fire. The passage might be translated the heavens and the earth are stored with fire, awaiting the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. We might have some conception of what this means as we think of the fearful catastrophe produced by the atomic bomb, which was, even to those who discovered it, a terrible revelation of the powers for destruction which are reserved in the heavens. When earths long day has run its course there will come not another flood but a universal conflagration which will sweep this globe clean of all that men have built up during the millennia of the past, and prepare for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
The Day Of The Lord And The Day Of God
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless (2Pe 3:8-14).
Because these wilfully ignorant men do not see the evidences of this they deny what they do not understand, and, Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil, as we are told in the book of Ecclesiastes (Ecc 8:11). If judgment seems to tarry it is not because God has forgotten, but rather because of His deep concern about lost men whom, in His loving-kindness, He still desires to save. Our thoughts are not His thoughts, neither are our ways His ways, but as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts (Isa 55:8). A thousand years may seem a long time to men whose span of life very seldom reaches a century, but one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Not two days have passed, therefore, according to the divine reckoning, since the Lord Jesus went away after giving the promise, I will come again (Joh 14:3). It is not, then, that the Lord is slack regarding His promise, as men are disposed to think, but His heart still goes out to those who are persisting in rebellion against Him; and He waits in grace still proclaiming the gospel message, and offering salvation to all who turn to Him in repentance, because He is not willing that any should perish.
But when at last the day of grace is ended the day of the Lord will succeed it, and that day will come to unbelievers as a thief in the night. The day of the Lord is not to be confounded with the day of Christ, which refers to the return of the Lord in the air to call His saints to be with Himself, when they will appear before His judgment-seat to be rewarded according to the measure of their faithfulness to Him while they have been pilgrims here below. The day of the Lord follows that. It will be the time when the judgments of God are being poured out upon the earth. It includes the descent of the Lord with all His saints to execute judgment on His foes, and to take pos- session of the kingdom so long predicted, and to reign in righteousness for a thousand glorious years in this very world where He once was crucified. As that great day of the Lord closes the heavens and the earth shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. This last expression is far easier understood today than it ever has been in past centuries, because of recent discoveries in connection with the explosive power of certain elements, such as uranium, when brought under terrific pressure. Following the destruction of the created heavens and this lower universe as we now know them, will come the fulfilment of the prediction of Isaiah (Isa 65:17) concerning a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness will dwell forever. This eternal condition is the day of God, in view of which the present created heavens and earth will be destroyed. The day of God is unending; it includes all the ages to come when sin will be forever banished from the universe, and righteousness will be everywhere manifest. Righteousness suffers during the present age. Those who would walk in obedience to the Word of God often are persecuted by those who seek to maintain the present order of things. In the millennium righteousness will reign: the authority of the Lord Jesus will be everywhere established, and evil will be held down; but in the eternal state righteousness will dwell, for all evil will have been banished to the lake of fire.
A Final Warning
And account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and for ever. Amen (2Pe 3:15-18).
So then Gods patience and long-suffering with mankind throughout all the centuries of human history are ever with a view to the salvation of any who will turn to Him, confessing their sin and believing the message of His grace.
Peter adds, Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you. This is very clearly an authentication of the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews. There can be no other writing to which he refers in this verse. As we have seen, Peter himself was addressing converted Jews or Hebrews. He tells us that the Apostle Paul had written a letter to the same people. There is no other of Pauls letters addressed to converted Jews but the Epistle to the Hebrews. And in that Epistle to the Hebrews Paul corroborates the testimony of Peter in regard to these eschatological truths which he has just been unfolding. In Heb 12:25-29 we get this corroborative testimony: See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven: whose voice then shook the earth: but now He hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire. Here we have set forth exactly the same truths that the Apostle Peter has been stressing. There should be no question, therefore, but that Peter was declaring that Paul was the author of this particular Epistle.
Then Peter goes on to say that in this special letter to the Hebrews, as also in all his Epistles, Paul had spoken of these things; and in these letters there are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. In this way Peter acknowledges Pauls letters to be accepted by all believers as the very Word of God. There are, in the Epistle to the Hebrews particularly, a number of passages which have caused untold distress to those who have but a feeble understanding of Gods great plan. Take such passages, for instance, as Heb 6:4-8; Heb 10:26-31. How often has the devil used these scriptures to trouble unstable souls with the awful thought that perhaps they have committed some unpardonable sin and so are hopelessly beyond the reach of mercy! While the passages themselves suggest nothing of the kind, yet they have been used of the enemy to disturb many. In others of Pauls writings there are passages which have been misused in the same way, but more notable in Hebrews than in any other Epistle.
Peter closes with two admonitions. In verse 17 (2Pe 3:17) he says, Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. No one will ever thus fail who keeps his eyes on Christ and his heart fixed on those things that are above where Christ sits at Gods right hand. Doctrinal error of a serious character is almost invariably connected with some moral failure. As we walk before God in holiness of life we will be preserved from destructive heresies, and as we walk in the truth we will be kept from sin in the life.
The final admonition is found in the last verse (2Pe 3:18): Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This is the unfailing panacea for all spiritual ills. As we go on to know Christ better and become increasingly like Him, and as we feed upon His Word, and it has its sway over our hearts, our progress will be consistent and continuous.
The final doxology is a very brief but a very precious one: To Him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. How Peters own heart must have been moved as he wrote these words! He had known Christ intimately in the days of His flesh; he himself had failed so grievously on the night of the betrayal; he had been restored so blessedly, both secretly and publicly, by the Lord Himself: so that Christ had become the all-absorbing passion of his soul. He alone deserved all the praise and all the glory, and that to the age of ages-the uttermost limits of that day of God, the day of eternity of which we have been reading.
2Pe 3:1
The Way of Remembrance.
Here, then, the message of an Apostle, nay, even the teaching of the Holy Spirit, is identified with sacred remembrance-remembrance of holy words and deep impressions dropped upon the heart in the highest moments of life. The apprehension of Divine things consists, it would seem, not in new discoveries, not in strained and laboured thought, but in the reawakening of the pure and simple mind and the gathering up of every Christlike image and affection from behind and from within.
I. This power, already known to Plato as reminiscence, is no other than that appeal to remembrance which Christ identified with the function of the Holy Spirit. This appeal, instead of passing downwards, like knowledge upon ignorance, or forward, like reason from point to point, moves inward towards a centre of faith and feeling that holds us all. It is by reversing our ambitious steps, not by advancing into original ideas, but by relapse upon simple affections, not by seizing new stations in philosophy, but by recovering the artlessness of the child, that we must find the joy of redemption and the wisdom of faith.
II. We have perhaps two sorts of memory, two ways at least in which we are referred to a prior state of the given object, and enabled to recognise it as not new. (1) There is the purely personal memory which reflects always the image of our individual selves, revives our actual experiences, writes our own biography, and hangs round the gallery of thought the portraits on which we love to gaze. Without this our being would have no thread of conscious continuity, our character no liability to judgment, our affections no root of tenacity. There are few lives which have not thus their secret store of natural pieties, their holy font of sweet and reverent affections, wherewith to rebaptise the dry heathenism of the present. (2) But besides this personal memory of our own past states, we have another, deeper and more refined, but not less real: an impersonal faculty which has another object than our own individual selves; a power of recognising, as ever with us, the secret presence of a Holy, a True, a God, that is not our own, that is above us, though within us, that has a right over us, which may be slighted, but cannot be gainsaid. When you wake up to the perception of deeper obligation or the consciousness of a sanctity unfelt before, your instant recognition of it is ever with you, seen or unseen, does not deceive you; it is not a new glory that is kindled, but the dull mind that is cleansed; and if the secret of the Lord were not consciously with you, it only waited till you were among them that fear Him.
J. Martineau, Hours of Thought, vol. ii., p. 92.
2Pe 3:3
Righteousness the School of Hope.
Note:-
I. The cause which led persons to argue that Christ was gone never to return. It was the absence of change; the unvarying order and course of nature; the undisturbed, unhalting progress of events. “Things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” Against this dead weight of custom we, too, have to struggle. The common and deadly form of unbelief in our time is the atheism of hopelessness, which, recognising no change in past or present, looks for none, and therefore believes in none, for the future.
II. It is not only or principally the contemptuous derider of Christian faith and hopes who grounds his rejection of Christ’s Gospel upon the unvarying course of nature. Rather is it the jester, the trifler, the player upon the surface of things, unwilling and unable to be earnest and to contemplate the seriousness of life and its momentous issues. These are the unbelievers most abounding and most difficult to convince. The scoffer scoffs as a defence against himself. There is more hope for him, just for this reason, than for the dilettante, the mere butterfly of infidelity, who enjoys his careless life in the sunshine, knowing nothing of any hour but the present. He does not wish for a world purged from evil and redeemed by Christ; he sees nothing of the good that is already in the world.
III. But, says the Apostle, there is an end to come, soon or late. Sin, and frivolity, and the cold heart must die, though good is imperishable. St. Peter may be in part appealing to the fears of the frivolous and the worldly, but he does not think the evil of their life to consist only in the punishment that may be in store for them; he reminds them that there can be no place for them in the new and redeemed world which God has promised, for the essence of the new heaven and the new earth for which they looked was that “therein dwelleth righteousness.”
A. Ainger, Sermons in the Temple Church, p. 210.
2Pe 3:4
The Promise of His Coming.
I. Here we have the language of those moods of the human soul which lead in the end to entire rejection of the second coming of Christ. (1) “Where is the promise of His coming?” See here the language of natural impatience. To many a man, in religious as in other things, the one thing that he cannot put up with is to be kept waiting. He gets angry with Almighty God when a truth is not immediately verified, when a grace is not instantaneously given, when a promise is not kept without delay. He gets angry with God, just as he would with an inconsiderate or neglectful servant who kept him standing at his front door, exposed to the wind and to the rain, instead of hurrying to open it at once. This was the temper of some souls at the close of the apostolic age. They had fled for refuge from the storms of heathen life, from falling fortunes, from blighted hopes, to lay hold on the hope set before them. They wanted to see as soon as possible with their bodily eyes the object of their hope. Years had passed since the ascension of Christ to heaven; yet He had not come to judgment. The Apostles, those first fathers of the faith, had one after another fallen asleep; yet Christ had not come to judgment. The first generation of believers, then the second, then perhaps the third, had passed away; yet Christ had not come to judgment. Why this delay? Why this protracted expectation? Why these disappointed hopes? Was He, was He, coming at all? Why should men wait for that which they had expected so earnestly, expected so long, why hope almost against hope for a fulfilment of the promise of the Advent? (2) “Where is the promise of His coming?” Here we have the language of incipient disbelief in a supernatural event yet to come. I say, “yet to come.” It is easier to believe in that which is above nature in a distant past, than at the present moment, or in a future which may be upon us at any moment. Many a man will believe in miracles eighteen hundred years ago who would not have believed in them at the time, who would not believe in the same miracles with the same evidence in their favour now. The promise of Christ’s coming in bygone ages, as now, has seemed to be in conflict with the idea that the supernatural has passed away for good, and that henceforth only such events as can be brought within that circle of causes which we term “nature” can reasonably be expected. (3) “Where is the promise of His coming?” There is a kind of half-faith, half-unbelief, which receives Christ with one hand, which repels Him with the other, which is willing to admit much about Him, but not to admit all that He says about Himself. In this state of mind men are glad that He came to teach, to save them, to leave them an example, that they should follow His steps, nay, to “bear their sins in His own body on the tree.” “He has done all this,” they say to themselves. “He has died, risen, left this world. He is seated in a distant world on a throne of glory.” And, if they said out quite frankly what they feel and think, they would add that they are grateful for what He has done, but that for the future they wish to be left alone, left to themselves, left with their memories about Him.
II. Let us place ourselves under St. Peter’s guidance, and see how he deals with this way of looking at things in the verses which follow my text. (1) Now, first of all, he raises the question of fact. The objector says to him that there have been no catastrophes, and that, therefore, none are to be expected. St. Peter points to the Deluge. The Deluge, whatever else may be said of it, was a catastrophe both in the history of nature and in the history of man. All through the ages during which man has inhabited this planet, and we know anything of his annals, there has been a succession of tragic occurrences, whether on the face of nature, or in the realm of human history. Holy Scripture calls these occurrences judgments, and they are judgments. They effect on a small scale, and for a race, or a generation, or a family, or a man, what the universal judgment will effect once for all for all the races of men. Sometimes they are the work of nature, or, to speak as Christians ought to speak, the work of God in nature. Such in the old days of the patriarchal history was the destruction of the corrupt cities of the plain-Sodom, Gomorrah, and the rest. Such in the splendid days of the Roman empire, and in a neighbourhood most favoured by the wealthy citizens of the capital of the world, was the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the last century, our great-grandfathers were accustomed to look upon the earthquake of Lisbon as an event of this character; and that mighty wave which, along the seaboard of Bengal, the other day swept some two hundred thousand and odd human beings into eternity, is a recent instance of nature doing what it will achieve hereafter on a yet more gigantic scale, winding up the account of a vast number of reasonable creatures with the God who made them. It is a mere difference, you will remark, of the area or scale of the operation. The principle is the same as that of the Deluge, the same as that of the convulsions which will accompany the coming of the Son of man. (2) And, secondly, St. Peter grapples with the complaint that the Second Advent is so long delayed: “Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” For the infinite mind time means nothing. There is no such thing for Him as delay. For Him all that will be is. The only question is how and when it will be unrolled to us. True, we may have to wait, we know not how long. (3) But, thirdly, can a reason be assigned for the delay, as it seems to us, of Christ’s coming to judgment? We know that this delay is not accidental; we know that it is not enforced; we know that it is not the result of caprice. But then what is its reason? St. Peter answers this question too. He says that there is a moral purpose, highly in accordance with the revealed character of God, in this delay: “God is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness. He is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” As love was the motive which moved God to surround Himself with created beings who could never, as He knew, repay Him for the privilege of existence, so in love does He still linger over the work of His hands when it has forfeited all title to exist. As “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” so He would fain extend, though it were to no purpose, the priceless blessings of this redemption so long as any soul may be redeemed. The delay is not accidental; it is not capricious; still less is it forced; it is dictated by the throbbings of the heart of God bending over the moral world in an unspeakable compassion.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 903.
2Pe 3:4
The Three Comings of Christ.
The Scripture speaks of the three comings of our Lord Jesus Christ: the historical coming “in great humility” more than eighteen centuries ago, and the future coming “in glorious majesty” at a day and an hour when we think not, and the present coming of Christ into the hearts of His true servants, and through them into the world. This we should call a spiritual coming.
I. I would remind you of the simple historical fact that less than two thousand years ago Jesus Christ came into this world. The more thoughtful we are, and in proportion partly to our age, partly to the range of our intellect, chiefly to our acquaintance with the things of God, will the real richness and manifold significance of Christ’s coming upon earth be felt by us. My present object is simply to remind you of it, to counsel you amid the busy, exciting rush of life to think once again over this most extraordinary and most momentous of all historical facts, the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in great humility, and the complete revolution in the history of the world which His presence inaugurated, His love and holiness inspired, while His Divine power rendered it possible and permanent.
II. There is a second coming of Jesus Christ. It is often spoken of by the name of the “Second Advent.” “We believe that He will come to be our Judge.” This human life of ours on earth is not intended by God, who gave it, to last for ever. Here it is stamped by three dark shadows: the shadow of sin, the shadow of sorrow, and the awful shadow of death. They will not be for ever. There will be a close of what is expressively, if unconsciously, called this earthly “scene”; and then a great change will come. Jesus Christ will be revealed to good and bad alike with a “glorious majesty” that may be either feared or welcomed, but cannot be questioned or ignored. “Heaven and earth shall pass away; but My words shall not pass away.”
III. We must speak, lastly, of His third coming: His coming now into our hearts-shall I say His actual coming or His desires, His efforts, to come? Try to believe that Jesus Christ is striving to enter your hearts. Whenever you feel your hearts touched; whenever your relish for prayer is quickened; whenever you are more certain that you are heard; whenever the call of duty sounds loud in your ears, bidding you be more bold and decided than heretofore in your Master’s service; whenever you come to hate, as hateful to Him, some form of evil which you had hitherto tolerated, this is for you an advent of Christ. Then is He indeed knocking at the door of your hearts, urging you to let Him enter and “make His abode with you.”
H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons, 2nd series, p. 292.
References: 2Pe 3:4.-R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons, p. 269; G. Huntington, Sermons for Holy Seasons, 2nd series, p. 1; H. P. Liddon, Advent Sermons, vol. i., p. 300; W. Skinner, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 107. 2Pe 3:8.-Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 109; J. Keble, Sermons for Advent, p. 58; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 447; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 4. 2Pe 3:9.-E. Garbett, The Soul’s Life, p. 357.
2Pe 3:10
The Suddenness of the Advent.
This truth of the suddenness of the advent of Christ we do not perhaps take sufficiently to heart; but if it be a truth that the second advent of Christ will be sudden, then some very important questions will arise out of that truth, which, whether welcome or unwelcome, must not be withdrawn from our consideration.
I. Let us look how far this truth of the suddenness of the coming of Christ is set forth in the Gospel. That the day of the Lord is to come suddenly is a truth laid down in the New Testament, not in one place only (though that would have been enough to make it true, as we have said, and, being true, to make it important), but in several places. It thus becomes a feature in the future aspect of the coming of the Son of man to be carefully borne in mind at all times when treating of this subject. “The day of the Lord shall come, and all men shall see the light.” The similitude of the thief is used in the text also as showing the striking suddenness of the Second Advent.
II. What is the inference from the suddenness of Christ’s coming as to the probable state of the world at that time? Were Christ to appear in the present age of the world, He would come suddenly to most of us. He is not generally expected. Few of us think of His actual appearance, though the hope of His coming is extensive enough. If, then, He is to come suddenly in whatsoever age of the world He may come, it is probable that the state of the world will be very much the same as it is in our own age, neither much better nor much worse. We may also infer from this suddenness, which is so frequently and specially predicted, that the world will not be prepared for Christ’s advent, for that the Lord will come suddenly when He does come does but show that there will be as little preparation then as there is now, and His coming will be sudden to most of us, owing to our own want of preparation. This truth, then, of the suddenness of the day of the Lord is a very practical one. Death is not necessarily sudden, but the coming of the Son of man is. Death is sudden always to those who are not prepared for it. And yet how few of us can endure to think upon the possibility of a sudden death! How many are there who are not prepared for death at all! Remember that they only are prepared to die who are prepared for a sudden death; and they only are prepared for the coming of the Son of man who are prepared for His coming suddenly. Preparation for the one. involves preparation for the other.
A. B. Evans, Church Sermons, vol. i., p. 65.
Reference: 2Pe 3:10, 2Pe 3:11.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1125.
2Pe 3:11
Advent.
I. The Apostles lived, and prayed, and laboured in the continual expectation that Christ would come again to them, and speedily, and that this promise would be fulfilled in their own lifetime. Thus He was always at the door of their life; and their attitude was just that in which we listen for every footfall, and watch the door that is soon to open when we are waiting for some honoured and expected visitant. And this eager, hopeful belief of theirs laid its strong hand on all their converts; the eye of every Christian was turned upwards every day with a strange sense of expectant awe. The mysterious vault of the sky overhead was to them not an unfathomable immensity peopled with unknown worlds, but the curtain which shut out from their vision the throne of God, and they expected it to open before them at any moment. This expectation was one of their chief means of grace. It supported them through unparalleled difficulties and suffering; it made them feel all the burdens of their painful life comparatively light, because heaven was at their doors, and the reign of Christ was expected shortly to begin. Through the force of this expectancy they were, in fact, risen with Christ, their thoughts were fixed on things above, their home was at the right hand of God, in a far stronger sense than can be said of any of us.
II. After the lapse of eighteen hundred years we have learned rather to feel that with the Lord a thousand years are as one day, and that we cannot read the signs of His final coming; but we have lost thereby what was to those who laid the foundation of Christian life among men an all-powerful incentive to absolute and entire devotion to the service of Christ. Let us try to build up our life on a foundation of fear and reverence. Let us catch something, some faint reflection, of that spirit in which men once approached Him of the incommunicable name, and whom we, out of reverence, have styled “Lord.” We cannot recall or recover those vivid expectations which filled the soul of the apostolic Christian, because we have learned by a long experience that we know not the end nor what we shall be, and that we cannot read the signs of any millennial time; but we can learn to wait for Him with the feeling of those who are in a holy presence, and waiting daily for that presence to manifest itself in clearer light and greater glory.
J. Percival, Some Helps for School Life, p. 206.
2Pe 3:12
From the Bibles that have marginal readings, it will appear that these words admit of a different construction: “Looking for and hasting the coming of the day of God.” As I understand the intention of God in the place, His will and command is this: that we should do both-“hasting unto,” and ourselves “hastening,” “the coming of the day of God.”
I. But now the question necessarily presents itself, Can anything which a man does really “hasten,” by a single moment, such an event as the second coming of Christ? In every age Christians are to be praying and labouring for the extension of the Gospel over the whole earth. They are so to pray and so to labour as if they knew that the conversion of the world would be given to their faith, their diligence, and their love. And so labouring and so praying, they may command results. The Church shall grow; souls shall be saved; God shall be glorified. But, nevertheless, all this is only the earnest of a better dispensation-the falling drops which tell that the shower is coming.
II. But can mortal wishes or mortal feelings accelerate that “day of God”? Assuredly. God has oftentimes, in His mercy, changed His times for His people’s sake, in answer to their supplications, and in consideration of what they said and did. Many things have gone back. Death has retired for fifteen years. The destruction of a city has been postponed indefinitely when it had been most decidedly declared as imminent “within forty days.” Great calamities, threatening a king and his people, have been handed down to the third and fourth generations. But has anything with God gone forward? Has the shadow on the dial ever gone on? “In those days shall be affliction such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be. And except that the Lord had shortened those days”-What does that “shortening” mean? That the day of deliverance, the fixed day of deliverance, was put forward “for the elect’s sake.” Then here is a great and happy event “hastening” on for man. God Himself has ever instilled the thought that there are certain things which for a period let or hinder the accomplishment of prophecy.
III. What, then, must we do to “hasten the day of God”? (1) Pray for it. What is the promise ought always to be emphatically the prayer of the dispensation. When we pray for any promise, what the prayer means is that we pray it to “come quickly.” Is the Second Advent an exception? Nay; has not our Lord encouraged us when He has given us His words, that ourselves may have the echo-for all prayer, if rightly looked at, is the echo of God’s word-“Surely I come quickly”.? Well, therefore, does the Church, in the most solemn of her services, teach us, over every opening grave, to say, “Accomplish the number of Thine elect, and hasten Thy kingdom.” (2) Let the Church live in love and union, in order that a united Church may attract her Lord to “come.” We can never forget that in His own last prayer He linked together inseparably the unity and the glory of His people-our oneness with His return. (3) Make great efforts for the evangelisation of the world. There are three things which have to be done before our Lord can “come.” The “knowledge” of Him must be coextensive with the habitable globe, the appointed sheaves of the Gospel harvest must be gathered in, and the Jews must be brought back to their own land and to Him. The first is already well-nigh accomplished; the second is altogether in the bosom of God; the third we must promote. (4) Cultivate personal holiness, as for every other reason, so for this: that every one who really loves God, and serves God, and is like God, as far as in him lies, is making that preparation by which the Church is to be ready for her Lord, just as “a bride is adorned for her husband.” Will He “come” until His bride has put on her jewels? And when she is decked and when she is meet indeed, can He stay away? It seems to be the law of all that is great that its movement at first is slow, and grows rapid at the last. We have seen it with the mercies and with the judgments of God; will it not be so with that grandest event which goes to make the climax of our world’s history?
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 12th series, p. 197.
References: 2Pe 3:12.-H. P. Liddon, Advent Sermons, vol. ii., pp. 133, 148, 162, 177; Bishop Barry, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv., p. 374.
2Pe 3:13
I. The man who saw this vision may be described as a dreamer, and the glorious dream which he has put before us here still waits for its fulfilment. But dreamers are the pioneers of workers, and there are few movements of progress which have not had them amongst their leaders. It is the dreamer by whom the thought is first presented. A glorious dream surely is this: “A new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” There is, in fact, something pathetic in the attention that is given to every man who professes to have seen a vision or dreamed a dream provided only it be one that promises to deliver us from the power of that callous selfishness which has made the lives of multitudes so bare of all enjoyment, so full of care and misery, so abandoned to vice and wickedness. The new prophet may have little help to give, but he is heard, and heard with a patient thoughtfulness which indicates the desire to profit by any hint for a solution of the terrible problems by which the minds of enlightened men are exercised. The danger of the hour is scarcely “faithless coldness.”
II. It would be useless, indeed, to deceive ourselves into the belief that some marvellous change has come over the spirits of men, that the demon of selfishness has been exorcised, that the lessons of the past have been wisely learned, and that we are about, under the influence of nobler thoughts and purposes, to enter upon an uninterrupted course of reform. In times of depression, looking at the force of opposition which all such changes have to encounter, a feeling of despair comes over the heart. The inroads made upon the kingdom of selfishness seem but small, and are with difficulty effected. The tendencies which in the past have not been altogether infrequent to reaction awaken the fear that the date of reform must be postponed to a very distant future. But in such moods we show not only a lack of faith, but also an inability to read correctly the signs of the times. We are progressing; we are in the midst of changes whose full significance we do not yet appreciate. The Church and the world are feeling the living forces of the Gospel as they have never felt them before. The victory is not yet, but the signs of success are many. We, at least, who believe in Christ “according to His promise look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
J. Guinness Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, Dec. 1892.
References: 2Pe 3:13.-F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 257. 2Pe 3:14.-R. Roberts, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv., p. 116; Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 326. 2Pe 3:14, 2Pe 3:15.-R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons, p. 15; J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany, p. 214. 2Pe 3:15, 2Pe 3:16.-G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points, p. 166.
2Pe 3:16
Consider the best means of avoiding the danger of professing to honour the word of God while yet you degrade it to purposes most alien from its spirit.
I. First, I would say, study the Scriptures. What a source of mischief is a rude and blind literalism! What ravages have been wrought in the use of Scripture by utter neglect of the context, making its isolated words the talisman to conjure with, while we profanely ignore their application! The whole field of Biblical exegesis is only too rich in error. The guide for moral conduct is to be found in the strength and unity of Scripture teaching, not in this or that precedent or text.
II. Let us be sternly on our guard against that inferential method against which Coleridge warned the Church so long ago. The general teaching of Scripture on all things necessary is plain and clear enough; and if we were not all as narrow, and as fierce, and as ignorant as we are, we might all draw water together in peace from these wells of salvation. Love, not hatred, is the key to open the difficulties of Scripture. Search the Scriptures as Christ bade you; and if you do so in the spirit of love, which is alone His spirit, you will find therein that good news of God which is the sole secret of individual salvation and of the progress, blessedness, and amelioration of the Church and of the world.
F. W. Farrar, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, May 6th, 1880.
2Pe 3:16
I. Strife, controversy, word-war, have gathered round the doctrine of atonement, the theory of justification, the mystery of the new birth, the everlasting sentence of God’s predestination, the possibility of falling from grace, the certainty of salvation, the full assurance of faith, the eternity of punishment. In all are “many things hard to be understood.” In all these there are what St. Paul calls -puzzles, riddles, hard sayings, paradoxes. In this searching of the Spirit into the deep things of God, as in all venturous voyages, no small peril has to be encountered. Happily for mankind, God, when He manifested Himself to the world in the person of His Son, hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes. The doors of the kingdom of heaven were easiest found by those that felt most their need of entrance there, by publicans and harlots sooner than by learned scribes or proud, contemptuous Pharisees. “Non in dialectica complacuit Deo,” says old St. Ambrose, “salvum facere populum suum.” “They that would do the will should know the doctrine.” “The kingdom of God,” cries Paul, “is not in word”-in a logically developed system-“but in power.”
II. The very principle of faith, and with it, I venture to think, the only sure and permanent guarantee of holiness, is imperilled from two opposite sides: from the dogmatisers who call upon us to receive as truths propositions from which sometimes our conscience, sometimes our reason, revolts; and from the men of science who bid us, as a duty we owe to truth, give up everything that the reason cannot explain. Both parties make upon us what I cannot but consider unreasonable demands. There are mysteries in science, as well as mysteries in faith; and if philosophers are not disloyal to science by accepting a “working hypothesis,” which they cannot fully prove, but which explains phenomena sufficiently well for practical purposes, neither are we disloyal to truth or false to our duty as reasonable beings for accepting as our hypothesis the principle of faith-faith which can give a reason for itself in part, though not wholly, and on which we think we can dare to work out our own salvation, albeit in fear and trembling. But the perils from the side of ultra-dogmatism are, perhaps, even greater than the perils from the oppositions of science falsely so called. Under the specious names of catholic dogma or of infallible truth, weak minds are lured to accept propositions about Divine things which, if not simply unmeaning, are utterly incredible, and which when examined are not found to rest on any authoritative or undoubted warrant of God’s word, but upon the precarious or over-subtle inferences of fallible man. And when this is discovered, the inevitable law of reaction comes into operation, and those who have believed most get to believe least, and the credulity of the youth is replaced by the scepticism of the man.
III. With regard to points of faith or doctrine, it was a memorable saying of Channing’s that men are responsible for the uprightness of their opinions rather than for rightness. The desire to be truthful at all hazards is a nobler temper than the mere desire to be what men call “sound.” The spirit of truthfulness is what Christ tells us the Father seeks in those who worship Him.
Bishop Fraser, University Sermons, p. 97.
2Pe 3:18
Divine Grace and Human Effort.
I. Whenever we have to consider any joint action of God and man, we are in danger either of thinking of God to the exclusion of man, or of man to the exclusion of God. If we think of the Bible as a Divine book, as given by the Spirit of God, we dwell upon the Divine element in it, until we almost forget that all the writers of these books were human beings like ourselves, until all the reality of the human side of the book fades away; and we forget that the love of John, and the logic of Paul, and the fervour of Peter, and the rapt, visionary mind of Isaiah, and the tender and sorrowing heart of Jeremiah-that every one of these was just as real, and is just as real, in this book, as the mind and the heart of the author are in the last book that was published and advertised yesterday. We forget the reality of the human element in the Bible while we dwell upon the Divine. And so, on the other hand, there is the danger that in attempting to make this book a real, and living, and human book to us, dwelling upon the human element, men forget the Divine, and they think and speak of these books and writings as the work of Paul, and Peter, and John, and Jeremiah, and Isaiah, and Moses, and forget that in and through all these the living and Eternal God is speaking words of eternal truth to men.
II. The word “grace” in the text gives us, of course, the idea of the Divine power. What is the idea that the word “growth” gives us? It gives us an idea of the Divine power and life, developing itself naturally and subject to natural influences. When you put a seed in the ground or plant a root in the ground, what happens? You have two things working together: you have the human hand that sets the seed and the human skill that trains and watches the seed. But in the seed what happens? Something that no man can give: you have a Divinely given life and power in that seed, and it is by virtue of that power that the seed grows up into the perfect plant, or the root into the full-grown tree. In the heart of every one of us is planted at his baptism the seed of grace, in which is the whole future life and growth of the Christian man. Just as in the acorn lies folded up the summer glory and beauty of the oak, so in the first sowing of the seed of grace in the human heart lies all the possibility of the perfect Christian life. But this life, if left to itself, perishes. This life, like all other life, must have its food, must have its suitable soil and clime, must have its careful tending, and watering, and pruning. Neglect these, and although the life that is in it be Divine, the human sin, the human carelessness, will stunt and stamp out eventually that very life itself. There is no Divine gift in man that may not be utterly lost by man’s treatment of that gift.
Bishop Magee, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 531.
References: 2Pe 3:18.-A. Raleigh, Quiet Resting-places, p. 145; J. Edmunds, Sermons in a Village Church, p. 263; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 80; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 100; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 427; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 46; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. ii., p. 296; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 27; Ibid., vol. xxviii., p. 33; T. V. Tymms, Ibid., vol. xxxiv., p. 45.
III. THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH AND THE CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 3
1. Mocking at the Lords coming (2Pe 3:1-7)
2. The future of the earth (2Pe 3:8-18)
3. Exhortation and conclusion (2Pe 3:11-18)
2Pe 3:1-7
The opening statement shows conclusively that Peter is the author and that this second Epistle was sent to the same believers to whom the first Epistle was addressed. The critics claim that this chapter marks a separate Epistle in itself and that it was combined by mistake with the preceding two chapters. Like so much else the critics put forth this is a foolish speculation wholly unwarranted. Peter states the reason for this second Epistle to stir up their pure minds by way of remembrance. He had already used a similar statement in the first chapter (2Pe 1:12), but now exhorts them to be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through the apostles. The evil had been prophetically pictured by Peter and now he charges them to use the Word of God in the coming days of peril and apostasy, and remember especially its prophetic forecast. The apostle Paul did the same after he had given the warning of the coming of grievous wolves and false teachers (Act 20:30).
Such is the resource of the true Church today, and in the degree, as we remember the words spoken by the prophets and by the apostles, give heed to them, we shall be kept in the perilous times. Both the prophets and the apostles warned of the evil to come as each age closes with apostasy and judgment; so did the Lord Himself when He predicted the future of the age and the conditions which precede His physical and glorious return. All have given the warning. Enoch was a prophet, as we learn from Jude; he prophesied about the coming of the Lord to execute judgment. There were apostates in his day who ridiculed his testimony and who spoke against him (Jud 1:15).
Noah was a preacher of righteousness; he built the ark and sounded the warning, but no one paid any attention to him, and as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be when the Son of Man cometh, said our Lord. The prophets warned of the judgment in store for Jerusalem ; the warning was not heeded, and such a great one as Jeremiah was not believed, and cast into the dungeon. The prophet Amos speaks of those who put far off the evil day. There were mockers and unbelievers each time an age ended. As already shown, the combined testimony of the apostles is on the same lines. Peter then writes: Knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for, from the day the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
While before Peter had shown the quality of the false teachers, he now points out by the revelation given unto him, that there would be unbelief and outright mockery touching the visible return of the Lord Jesus Christ. In both Epistles this great coming event, the coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven, has a prominent place. The false teachers, whose doom will be sealed when Christ comes again, also ridicule and scoff at the idea that He will ever show Himself again. And why do they mock and sneer? It has its source in unbelief These men are infidels. Every destructive critic is an infidel. The records of the past embodied in the Holy Scriptures are denied to be authentic and reliable. The prophets of God were Jewish patriots who dreamt of a great Jewish future. The magnificent prophecies as to the coming kingdom and the rule of the King of Kings are classed with the apocalyptic ramblings of the Sibyline writings. The Lord Jesus Christ is even impeached as to His knowledge and is regarded as being under the ignorant prejudice of the times in which He lived. It all emanates from the rejection of the Bible as the inerrant revelation of God.
Never before has this prophecy been so literally fulfilled as now. The Holy Spirit has revived the study of prophecy. The midnight cry has gone forth. The blessed hope has been restored to the Church, and the forgotten prayer, Even so, Come, Lord Jesus, is being prayed by the members of the body of Christ as never before. There is more preaching and teaching going on today on prophecy than ever before in the history of the church. It is one of the signs that the end of the age is very near. But the revival of prophecy has resulted in the activity of Satan. He both perverts and ridicules the coming of the Lord, and as that blessed event draws near, there will be increasing ridicule and mockery from the side of the apostates. (Of late certain presses of evangelical denominations have turned out tons of literature warning against the premillennial teachings. The Methodist church of Canada circulated a series of 5 pamphlets which attacked the blessed hope. They were the production of an infidel. The Chicago University and similar institutions also fight prophecy. Sneers and ridicule about His coming, the end of the age, the increase of evil and the coming are constantly multiplying. It is all a fulfillment of what Peter has written.)
The apostates dream of human progress, for they are evolutionists. Their pet law, the survival of the fittest, must work on till the last vestige of the beastly in man has worked itself out by a natural process, for they deny the need as well as the power of redemption. They call a belief in the coming of the Lord pessimism, and have even attempted to brand those who believe in a catastrophic ending of this present evil age enemies of civilization and human progress. What God hath spoken, what the mouth of all His holy prophets have declared, that the hope of the world is the coming and the enthronement of the Lord Jesus Christ, is extremely distasteful to them, for it conflicts with the program they have invented, a program which has no scriptural support whatever. They take the ground of an assumed unchangeableness of the world, that a sort of cycle governs nature, and thus they deny the positive statements of the Word of God and exclude God from His own creation. Science, meant to be a helpmeet to faith, is used by them to uphold their infidelity. They constantly speak of science contradicting revelation, which is not true.
The deluge which Peter mentions as an evidence of a past catastrophe, when the world was overflowed with water, they wilfully forget or, as it is now generally done, class it with myths of other nations, though science has abundantly proven that there happened such a judgment. But they do not want to believe that there can be a supernatural interference with the world. They believe in things continuing as they are and steadily improving. Up to the very time when the predicted sudden destruction shall come upon them, they say Peace and safety (1Th 5:1-28). It was so, no doubt, when the deluge swept the unbelieving and secure generation of that time to eternal doom.
(Some apply the words relating to a past judgment to the judgment which passed over the original earth on account of Satans fall. That there was such a judgment the second verse of the Bible teaches and geological facts confirm that the earth passed through a prehistoric destruction. But the reference is to the deluge. Almost every nation on earth has traditions of the deluge, though often in a perverted form. While the apostates and sneerers make everything of historical evidence and tradition, they ignore the universality of traditions concerning the flood.)
2Pe 3:8-10
A great revelation follows. The heavens that are now, and the earth by the same word have been stored up, reserved for fire against a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. Then in 2Pe 3:10, But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. As the earth was once judged by water so shall it be judged by fire in the future, and not the earth only but also the heavens, that is the heavens surrounding the earth. Years ago infidels used to ridicule the statement of Peter that the earth and the surrounding heavens would be consumed by fire. They spoke of it as an impossibility that the earth with its rivers, lakes and oceans could ever pass through such a conflagration, so that all is consumed. Well informed infidels no longer ridicule this statement, for astronomy with the help of the spectroscope has revealed the fact that other bodies in the heavens have passed through great conflagrations, that other globes have been burned up, and not a few astronomers have advanced the theory that this will be the fate of the earth on which we live. Peter had no telescope, nor did he know anything about astronomy. How did he find out that the earth would be destroyed by fire? It was the Spirit of God who revealed it to him.
The question arises what event is it of which Peter speaks here? He speaks of the day of the Lord. What phase of that coming day is it? It certainly is not the coming of the Lord for His saints as revealed in 1Th 4:1-18. Nor is it the day of the Lord in its beginning, when the Lord appears in power and great glory. Now it is still mans day, and when He appears the Day of the Lord begins. One day, Peter tells us, with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. From Revelation we learn that Christ will reign over the earth with His saints for a thousand years and that is the Day of the Lord. The beginning of it will be as a thief, and it will bring fiery judgments, for He will be revealed in flaming fire. But what Peter speaks of is not so much the beginning of that day of the Lord as it is the end, when the thousand years have expired.
When the thousand-year reign of Christ as King is over there follows a little season during which Satan is loosed from his prison; the revolt of which Rev 20:8 speaks is followed by fire falling down from God out of heaven, and after that we see the great white throne, the judgment of the wicked dead. And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away, and there was found no place for them (Rev 20:11). It is this of which Peter writes, when the day of the Lord is ended, the earth and the surrounding heaven will pass away; it will be through a mighty conflagration from beneath and from above. [It will be observed, that the Spirit does not speak here of the coming of Christ, except to say that it will be scoffed at in the last days. He speaks of the day of God, in contrast with the trust of unbelievers in the stability of the material things of creation, which depends, as the apostle shows, on the word of God. And in that day everything on which unbelievers rested and will rest shall be dissolved and pass away. This will not be at the commencement of the day, but at its close; and here we are free to reckon this day, according to the apostles word as a thousand years, or whatever length of period the Lord shall see fit. (Synopsis of the Bible).] When Peter writes in 2Pe 3:13 of new heavens and a new earth, he states what John beheld in his vision of Rev 21:1. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea.
Some of these Jewish believers were evidently thinking that the Lord was slack about the fulfillment of the promise concerning that day. The apostle tells them that the Lords slackness is His long-suffering, He is not willing that any should perish but all should come unto repentance.
2Pe 3:11-18
In view of such a future the apostle exhorts once more to holy living and godliness, waiting for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God. The thought which is often expressed in the words hastening the coming of the day of God, that we might act and serve, sending the gospel to the heathen, and do other things, thus hastening the coming of the Lord, is not warranted by the text, nor is it true. God cannot be hastened by the creature, nor can He be delayed in the execution of His eternal purposes.
As stated in the preceding annotations, the fiery ending of the Day of the Lord, and with it the Day of God, the eternal Age, when God is all in all, is what Peter teaches. But we, according to His promise, wait for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. The promise is found in Isa 65:17, For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come to mind. This is not the millennium, which in this chapter of Isaiah is described in Isa 65:18-25, but that which comes into existence after the earth and the surrounding heavens have passed through the great conflagration. Once more Isaiah speaks of the earth and heavens which will remain forever. (See Isa 66:22.) This new earth and the new heavens will be the glorious and eternal dwelling-place of the redeemed, for the new Jerusalem comes finally out of the highest heaven to find its eternal resting place there (Rev 21:1-27). Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye wait for these things, be diligent to be found in Him in peace without spot and blameless.
in conclusion, Peter refers to Paul as our beloved brother Paul. The Epistle to the Galatians was then in circulation and everybody could read there of Peters failure in Antioch (Gal 2:12-16). The loving remark by Peter shows that he had readily seen his mistake and that there was no clash between the two servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Epistle which Paul had written to the same Jewish Christians to whom Peter wrote is without question the Epistle to the Hebrews. (See Introduction to Hebrews.)
The Second Epistle of Peter ends with another warning, so well suited for our times, Beware, lest, being carried away with the error of the wicked (destructive critics and deniers of Christ), ye fall from your own steadfastness. And the safeguard is Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
To Him be Glory both now and forever, Amen.
second epistle: 2Co 13:2, 1Pe 1:1, 1Pe 1:2
I stir: 2Pe 1:13-15, 2Ti 1:6
pure: Psa 24:4, Psa 73:1, Mat 5:8, 1Ti 5:22, 1Pe 1:22
way: 2Pe 1:12
Reciprocal: Deu 8:2 – remember Deu 11:18 – ye lay up Joh 20:30 – General Joh 21:17 – Feed Act 2:42 – they Act 11:16 – remembered Rom 15:15 – as Phi 3:1 – To write Phi 4:8 – are pure 1Ti 4:6 – thou put Tit 3:1 – Put Heb 2:1 – we should Rev 3:3 – Remember
CHAPTER 2, THEN, is a very dark one. It introduces by way of parenthesis a very necessary warning. With the third chapter the apostle Peter returns to his main theme, the immense importance of true prophecy. The true believer, being born again, has a pure mind. Yet though pure it needs to be stirred up to constant mindfulness of what God has said whether by the holy prophets of Old Testament days or by the apostles and prophets of the Lord Jesus in New Testament Scripture. The chapter plainly shows us what is the effect of bringing prophetic truth to bear upon the pure mind of the believer; he is thereby separated in heart and life from the world that must come not only spiritually but also materially under judgment and so disappear (see, verses 2Pe 3:10-14).
This, be it noted, is exactly the opposite of what is found in 2Pe 2:1-22. There it is the iniquitous teaching of the false prophet with the inevitable effect of entangling its votaries in the world and its corruptions. Here it is the light of truth given through the prophet raised up of God, which has the effect of separating those who receive it from the world and its corruptions.
This distinction stands true everywhere and always. So much so, indeed, that we may be able to judge of the truth and soundness of any teaching set before us by asking ourselves this simple question,-if I receive this teaching as truth will it have the effect in my mind of separating me from the world or of confirming me in it? There are other tests, of course, which we must not ignore, but this one alone is quite conclusive.
It would seem that immediately the apostle Peter returned to the subject of true prophecy he was conscious of the fierce antagonism to it on the part of adversaries. Hence first of all he issues a warning and that especially as to the opposition to be expected in the last days from scoffers, walking after their own lusts. Wishing to give free rein to their carnal desires they deride that which most would put a check upon them.
There have always been scoffers of this sort. Verse 2Pe 3:4 however predicts that in the last days they will base their scoffing upon the steady continuity of all things from time immemorial, which, they will assert, makes any sudden catastrophe, in days to come, such as the coming of the Lord, an unthinkable thing. Verse 2Pe 3:5 follows this up by stating that to fortify their denial they will also deny that such a catastrophic intervention as the flood could ever have taken place in times past. They willingly [i.e., wilfully] are ignorant of it. The thing is hid from them because they will to have it so.
This prediction of verses 2Pe 3:3-6 is really most cheering for us. Here is a prophecy of the Scripture the fulfilment of which is being dinned into our ears almost every day. During the last century there has been a greatly revived expectation of the coming of the Lord amongst true Christians, and during at least the last half century the idea of His coming has been resisted with increasing scorn, for it cuts right across the evolutionary theories which are all the rage. To a mind obsessed with evolution the flood of the past, as recorded in Genesis, and the personal coming of Christ in the future are equally unbelievable. They remain wilfully ignorant of the one and they scoffingly deny the other. For over nineteen centuries scoffers have scoffed. Only during the last half century have they scoffed on these grounds. But the scoffers are to scoff on these grounds in the last days. Therefore the conclusion is definite and unmistakeable: we are in the last days. This is indeed most cheering. We may well praise God! This day is this Scripture fulfilled in our ears (see, Luk 4:21).
How did the flood take place? The answer is, by the Word of God. By the same Word the existing heavens and earth are reserved unto fire in the coming day of judgment. The Word of God overthrew the flimsy unbelief of men in the past and it will do so again. The eye of faith sees written upon the finest construction of mens hands, the ominous words,
RESERVED UNTO FIRE.
The mocking question of the scoffer springs of course out of the fact that many centuries have elapsed since the Lord left this earth with the promise that He would come again quickly. We have therefore to recognise the fact, stated in verse 2Pe 3:8, that Gods ideas of time are very different to ours. A thousand years are as one day to Him, as indeed Psa 90:4 had told us, one day is also as a thousand years, as is illustrated in verse 2Pe 3:10 of our chapter. We must not therefore count Him slack if much time has elapsed to our way of thinking.
The reason for the long waiting time is not slackness but long-suffering. The second advent will mean the striking of a tremendous blow in judgment. This though necessary is no joy to God. He does not desire that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. The alternative is very clearly stated in these words. It is repent or perish.
Yet the judgment blow will be struck when the time arrives. The Lord will come when men do not expect Him, as a thief in the night, and thus usher in His day. That day will comprise a thousand years as other Scriptures show. It will commence with His coming and not close until the passing away of the earth and its surrounding heavens, dissolved by fire. This will not take place until the end of His thousand years reign is reached, as stated in Rev 20:7-11. That same destruction of the heavens and the earth will usher in the day of God of which Rev 21:1-8 speaks,-the eternal state. The day of the Lord and the day of God are like two circles touching each other and just overlapping at the point where the heavens and earth are destroyed, so that their destruction may be said to be in both of them.
The day of the Lord is the period especially characterized by the exaltation of Christ, as Lord and Administrator of the will of God, when righteousness will reign. It lasts for 1000 years. The day of God is the succeeding eternal state in which God shall dwell with men in a new heaven and new earth and there righteousness shall dwell without a solitary foe to challenge its peace.
These things are plainly declared in the prophetic Word and we know them. But to what end are they made known to us? The answer to this question is found in verse 2Pe 3:11 and in verses 2Pe 3:14-18. All is designed to have a present effect upon our characters and lives.
We know that the dissolution of the earth and all its works is decreed by the Word of God. Then we shall be marked by holy conversation-i.e., a separate manner of life-and godliness. We shall be as those who expect and hasten the coming day. The Christian who spends all his energies in making the best of this world may affirm that he knows these things, but he hardly believes them in the true sense of the term. Lot struck his roots deeply into the soil of Sodom but it was because he did not know its doom was decreed. What would he have done had he known it? In very deed the light of true prophecy has a separating and sanctifying effect.
We know too that we shall enter into the blessedness of the eternal state in the new heavens and the new earth. Then we shall be diligent- here Peter returns to the word he had used in 2Pe 1:5 -to walk now in peace, spotless and unblameable. The eternal state will be a scene of peace because no spot nor blame shall be there. Well, we shall aim at the characteristics of the new heavens and new earth before they actually arrive.
Further, we shall account that the present longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, consequently we shall not chafe under the waiting time it imposes upon us. We shall know that every day of waiting and perhaps suffering which is entailed for us means the salvation of multitudes. And not only this-for the accounting will not stop with a mere mental recognition of the fact but express itself in action-we shall bend our energies to the setting before men of that which is ordained for their salvation, until the Lord comes. The gospel of God is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth (Rom 1:16).
As Peter opened his first epistle (1Pe 1:12) it appears as if he referred to Pauls labours amongst these dispersed Jews. Now at the close of the second Epistle he specifically names him and not only all his epistles in a general way but also some special writing or epistle which he had addressed to them, according to the wisdom given him from on high. So evidently Paul wrote to the Hebrews. It may of course have been a writing not intended for preservation as part of the Scriptures, and hence not extant today. It is much more likely to be that wonderful Epistle to the Hebrews that we possess for our souls rejoicing. In that Epistle he does indeed speak of these things. See particularly Heb 12:25-29. He speaks of them in his other epistles too.
Notice how Peter writes of Paul, the man who had to withstand and rebuke him once at Antioch (See Gal 2:11). Not a trace of bitterness is there, nor a trace of that Judaizing spirit which Paul had to withstand. Martyrdom was approaching for both of them, and it is, our beloved brother Paul. Delightful-is it not? The freest flowing forth of Christian affection and the fullest acknowledgement of the grace and gift bestowed upon another than himself. We can see the warm and loving heart that beat in Peter without the taint of egotism, which marred it when he was young, and thought he loved more than all the other apostles.
Yet he had to say that in Pauls epistles there were things hard to be understood. In so saying he wrote doubtless as the apostle to the circumcision identifying himself with the believers of his own nation. All the truth concerning the church, its place in the purposes of God, its privileges, its composition of an election gathered from Gentiles as well as Jews, all that which Paul speaks of, in short, as the mystery of Christ (Eph 3:4) was bound to be hard to a Jew. It cut across every fibre of their national feeling which had been fostered for centuries. The truth was simple enough from an intellectual point of view but the eyes of their hearts needed opening to see it. This was recognized by Paul in Eph 1:18, where the word understanding should be hearts. Except we too have the eyes of our hearts opened we have to sadly confess when we read Gods Word it is hard to be understood.
Scripture too may be wrested or distorted to the destruction of those who so treat it. Those who do so are unlearned and unstable. Unlearned, or untaught, means of course untaught, not in the wisdom of the world, but in the things of God. Here Peter may have been especially referring to a Gentile danger, the sort of thing that Paul himself warns Gentiles against in Rom 11:13-29. If Gentiles misunderstand and misuse Gods truth so as to become wise in their own conceits they are very near destruction. Still even if Peter did especially refer to this his words are capable of a much wider application. Let us all beware of twisting the Word of God!
Now, we have been forewarned. Thus we are forearmed against the error of the wicked, lest we should fall. The error of the wicked was fully exposed in 2Pe 2:1-22. It is not enough however to be warned against evil; we must be in the positive enjoyment of truth. The way not to go back is to go on. Like a man on a bicycle, the Christian must go on if he would avoid falling off. Hence we must grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
This word just summarizes the main teaching of the Epistle. Spiritual growth was the great theme of 2Pe 1:1-21 and to it the apostle returns in his closing words. All true growth is in grace, the grace of God. Then as we expand in grace we grow in graciousness of spirit. All true growth too is in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, in whom the grace of God has reached us.
Who shall set a limit to our expansion in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord? Both are alike illimitable. Planted here, we are like trees that have struck their roots down into a subsoil of fertile richness that is without a bottom!
To Him be glory both now and for ever, Amen.
Inexcusable Ignorance
2Pe 3:1-18
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
We like the way this chapter opens. The Apostle says, “This Second Epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance.
The child of God often needs to be stirred up to remember. In the first chapter of this Epistle we found that Peter was going to stir up the saints relative to the Lord’s Second Coming. He wanted them to keep the Lord’s Return constantly in remembrance. Now, he would stir them up concerning the conditions which will forecast that Coming, and sustain its certainty.
1. There is an admonition to remember the destruction of some who were saved out of Egypt. Jude writes in his fifth verse telling us of the advent of false teachers who have crept in unawares. Then he says, “I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.” Also. how “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
This call to remembrance is likewise akin to Peter’s in that it gives a warning to those who hold the faith lest they fall away from it and become apostate. Here is a tremendous message.
The Lord spoke in the parable of the Sower, of the seed which was choked out by thorns, and also the seed which grew for a while but soon faded away under the hot sun.
How many there are today who hear and know the doctrine of the Coming of the Lord, It is a sweet morsel unto them, but just as soon as persecution arises, they fall away.
2. There is an admonition to remember all the words spoken by Jesus (Act 20:35). So many believers fall by the way and lose their crowns, and their place in the Kingdom, because they fail to remember the words which Christ, the Prophets, and the Apostles have spoken.
If we only walked in the Spirit, we would remember Christ’s words, inasmuch as it is written: “[He will] bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (Joh 14:26).
No seaman, or captain, guiding his boat through treacherous seas dares to neglect his charts, and his compass. No Christian dares forget the words of his Lord.
We have abundant revelations from God as to the march of current events. Alas, however, so few are giving any attention to prophecy.
Why should we fail to remember? Why should we cast away our confidence in the Blessed Hope, which has great recompense of reward?
How well I remember the moment
When Christ spoke sweet peace to my soul;
The day that I found full salvation,
From me ev’ry burden did roll:
If I should forget that glad moment,
Or cease to confess my dear Lord.
Let me then forget all my cunning,
My tongue fail to utter a word.
How well I remember the moment
When all on His altar I laid;
The day that I brought back unto Him,
The life that His ransom had paid:
If I should forget that surrender,
Refusing His call to obey,
Let me my ingratitude ponder,
My crown then be taken away.
Wherever grace operates, works are eliminated; where ever works operate, grace is eliminated.
Salvation from sin’s penalty cannot be. lost. A saved sinner cannot go to hell, because he has passed from death to life, and his life is eternal. However, there is much that a Christian may lose. He may lose his crown. He may lose his place of honor and service, in the reign of Christ.
This is a solemn consideration. Remember the admonition, “Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” We must not cast away our confidence which has great recompense of reward. We must suffer with Him, if we would reign with Him.
I. IGNORANT OF THE PROPHETS (2Pe 3:2)
Here is the way the verse reads: “That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy Prophets, and of the commandment of us the Apostles of the Lord and Saviour.”
1. Ignorance is always to be deplored, but inexcusable ignorance is to be decried. Paul said on one occasion concerning Satan, “We are not ignorant of his devices.” Paul was not ignorant, simply because. God had revealed to him, in His Word, the cunning of Satan, and of his strategies. In Rom 2:1-29 we read, “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man.” The inexcusable man, is the man who refuses the light. He knew God, but he glorified Him not as God. He professed himself to be wise, when he was a fool.
2. An example of inexcusable ignorance. We refer to the Jews of Christ’s day. Act 13:1-52 tells us (beginning with Act 13:27) “For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the Prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him.” Act 13:29 tells us, “And when they had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulchre.”
Is it not strange that the Jews who read the Prophets, did not know Him of whom the Prophets wrote? Peter charged them with the death of Christ, and then he said unto them, “I wot that through ignorance ye did it.” Yet, why should they have been ignorant when the voice of the Prophets was before them all the time?
We are just as ignorant. The people of our day are fulfilling prophecy just as literally and minutely as did the Jews of Christ’s day. They knew it not; neither does the present-day populace know.
The masses, not only of the, unsaved and worldly, but of the professedly saved, and church members, are utterly ignorant of the Prophets, and of the present-hour fulfillment of their prophecy.
In Luk 24:25 the Lord said, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken.” We wonder if some day He will not say unto many saints the same sad words?
II. IGNORANT OF HIS COMING (2Pe 3:3-4)
Our two verses tell us that in the last days scoffers will arise, walking in their own desires, or lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His Coming?”
We are sure that the young people who read this will acknowledge the fact that the last-day scoffers are here. People are saying today, just what Peter said they would say. They are crying. “Where is the promise of His Coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”
1. Christ’s first coming was not believed. We read in Joh 1:10-11 that He was in the world and the world knew Him not. In Act 13:1-52, Peter told the Jews that they knew Him not. We read in Rom 11:25 that blindness had come upon Israel.
What grief must have been in our Lord’s heart when He stood overlooking Jerusalem, He said at that time: If thou hadst known even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace but now they are hid from thine eyes.”
2. Christ’s Second Coming is likewise not believed. In 1Th 4:14 it is written, “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” These words tell us, in effect, that if we believe, in the First Coming, and we do, we should also believe in the Second Coming.
The next verse goes on to say, “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive,” etc., then follows a description of our Lord’s Coming from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel.
In the fifth chapter of the same Epistle, 1Th 5:4, we read, “But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” May God help us not be ignorant for Christ said, “I will come again.”
III. IGNORANT OF HIS JUDGMENTS (2Pe 3:5)
“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the Word of God the Heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.”
The Apostle is still speaking of scoffers, who mock the Second Coming of Christ. He now says that they are willingly ignorant, and he refers particularly to their unbelief concerning the judgments which the Prophets announce will take place at the Coming of Christ.
The scoffers say that all things continue as they were from the beginning. In this they are mocking the possibility of the age-end judgments which the Bible proclaims will accompany our Lord’s Second Advent. Peter says they are “willingly” ignorant, because they all know the story of the flood and how the earth was destroyed thereby.
The Apostle draws the conclusion that the same earth which was once destroyed by water will yet be destroyed by fire. We know that the physical earth is stored with fire, and one day it will be consumed by fire.
Before we deny the Coming Advent judgments, let us go over to the old country and view the ruins of ancient Nineveh. Let us try to find the site upon which the once gorgeous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were builded. He who destroyed those cities will destroy the cities which are now lifting up their heads against Him, The Battle of the great God Almighty draws on apace. We are foolish to decry God’s coming wrath.
IV. IGNORANT OF DIVINE CHRONOLOGY (2Pe 3:8)
“But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
1. We think God never will act because He does not act immediately. The scoffers say that since the centuries have passed, and He has not come, He will never come. The Apostle says that we should, not be ignorant-that a thousand years are but a day with God.
We count time by “years.” God counts time by “millenniums.” Sometimes even a day seems to us to be weary and long; Its moments seem hours; Its hours seem days; and its days seem years.
We need to remember that from the promise in the gardens relative to the Seed of the woman, until the time when the Seed was born of the virgin there was a period of four thousand years. Yet, the statement is written in the Epistle to the Galatians, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.”
Because approximately two thousand years have passed since the Lord said, “If I go * * I will come again,” is that any reason to doubt that promise? Two thousand years is but two days with God.
2. We must remember that God is “longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish.” There is a reason for God’s waiting. The Lord might have come in the lifetime of Peter. Had He done so, where would we have been?
3. However, God is “not slack concerning His promise.” This is the statement in 2Pe 3:9; and then, in 2Pe 3:10, he adds, “But the. day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.” When the Lord does come, He will come on schedule time, and He will not tarry.
V. A PLEA FOR GODLINESS IN VIEW OF THE LORD’S RETURN (2Pe 3:11-12)
The Holy Spirit through Peter has given us four admonitions concerning ignorance. He now gives us three appeals to those who believe in the Coming of the Lord. It is our part to discuss the first of these three.
1. A call to godliness. 2Pe 3:11 reads: “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be?” In effect, Peter is saying, “Since you know that all these things will be dissolved, since you know that the day of the Lord will come as a thief, since you know that the earth, and its works will be burned up, therefore you should live ‘in all holy conversation and godliness.'” Others may live for things In the world, and lay up their treasures on earth. It would be folly for us to do so. If you know that this earth is about to fall under the fiery judgments of God, will you seek to permanently place your treasures therein?
2. A promise of new heavens and a new earth. Peter not only gives us this call to godliness and to holy conversation; Peter not only tells us that we should live godly and holy; Peter not only tells us of the coming judgment upon this physical earth, but he also tells us that, according to God’s promise, we “look for New Heavens and a New Earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Thus the appeal to separation from sin, and to holy living in Christ becomes the stronger.
The appeal is based first upon the fact that the world and all therein shall be destroyed, and secondly upon the fact that new heavens and a new earth shall come.
“Be ye therefore holy as your Father in Heaven is holy.”
VI. A CALL TO DILIGENCE BECAUSE OF THESE THINGS (2Pe 3:14)
1. A call to diligence. Peter’s next appeal is based upon knowledge. He says, “Beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless.” 2Pe 3:11 said, “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved.” 2Pe 3:13 said, in effect, seeing that the new heavens and new earth shall be established, How tremendous now is this appeal for diligence.
Others who do not accept the Lord’s Coming, may live deliriously upon the earth, and carelessly waste their years in rioting and folly, but we who believe in the Lord’s Return, in the judgments which will follow on this earth, and particularly in the glories of the new heavens and new earth, should be giving diligence that we may be found of Him in peace without spot, and blameless.
2. A call reinforced. In Peter’s Second Epistle you remember that he wrote, “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue.” The Apostle Paul wrote virtually the same thing. He wrote of pressing toward the prize of the up-calling of God in Christ Jesus, and then he called upon the saints to be thus minded.
Beloved, life is not given unto us for frivolity and for fun. It is given unto us freighted with precious moments and days that we may lay up for ourselves a goodly heritage against the time to come.
In all of this we must remember that we were saved by grace, but that we must give all diligence for an abundant entrance into the glory. Some will be ashamed from before Him at His Coming. God grant that we may be found robed and ready, in peace, and without spot and blameless.
VII. A WARNING TO THOSE WHO SEE AND BELIEVE (2Pe 3:17-18)
Second Peter closes with a tremendous warning. Once more we find the expression, “Seeing ye know these things,” This is the third time since 2Pe 3:11 that we have the faith of the saints thrown against the unbelief of the mockers. They mock, we believe. They ridicule the Second Coming of Christ, the promise of His Coming, and the judgments which will fall upon the earth. We believe.
Peter says in 2Pe 3:17, “Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.” Peter is not giving us a warning lest we lose eternal life, but he is giving us a warning lest we lose our crowns. Saved people may be saved “by the skin of their teeth.” Peter wants them to have “an abundant entrance.”
The last statement of the chapter sums up the yearning of the Holy Spirit in Peter, in one tremendous call: “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Whatsoever else we may do, this one thing let us do, lest we should be ashamed before Him.
The wicked may mock. Weak and faltering saints may fail, but let us “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.”
Hold fast to that thou hast attained,
Nor let it slip;
Christ has a wondrous crown ordained,
For those who have the faith sustained,
So do not trip.
Salvation is made sure by grace,
It can’t be lost;
Yet, you can lose your victor’s race,
And you can lose your reigning place,
With fearsome cost.
AN ILLUSTRATION
WEDGES
“When a man cleaves a block he first pierces it with small wedges. and then with greater; and so doth the devil make entrance into the soul by degrees. Judas first purloineth and stealeth out of the bag; then censureth Christ as profusely lavishing. What needs this waste? This was not only a check to the woman, but to Christ Himself. Lastly, upon Christ’s rebuke he hates Him, and then betrays Him to His enemies.” There is no dealing with the devil except at arm’s length. Those little wedges of his are terribly insinuating because they are so little. Keep them out, or worse will follow. Occasional glasses lead on to drunken orgies; occasional theater-going grows into wantonness and chambering; trifling pilfering soon grows to. downright theft; secret backslidings end in public abominations. The egg of all mischief is as small as a mustard seed. It is with the transgressor as with She falling stone, the further he fails the faster he falls. * *
O my Saviour, let me not fall by little and little, or think myself able to bear the indulgence of any known sin because it seems so insignificant. Keep me from sinful beginnings, lest they lead me on to sorrowful endings.”-Chas. II. Spurgeon.
2Pe 3:1. In calling this his second epistle which he says he writes unto you, it shows that the persons he addresses in 1Pe 1:1 and 2Pe 1:1 are the same brethren though he designates them in different language. He is still calling attention to the motive in each epistle, namely, to stir up their memory. Pure minds denotes that their minds were sincerely interested in the truth.
2Pe 3:1. This is now, beloved, a second epistle that I write unto you. The sentence might be rendered literally thus: This already second epistle, beloved, I write unto you. The expression seems to imply that a comparatively short time had elapsed since he wrote them before. This is referred to as an evidence of his affectionate solicitude, as well as of the importance and urgency of the subject-matter (Lillie). The First Epistle is thus incidentally claimed to be by the same hand. The author prefaces what he has now to say about the scoffers of the last days by a personal statement, as was the case also with the solemn affirmation made in chap. 2Pe 1:12-15. The Epistle also deepens notably in the loving urgency of its tone, as it now approaches its conclusion. Hence the repeated appeals to the readers as beloved which distinguish this chapter (2Pe 3:1; 2Pe 3:8; 2Pe 3:14; 2Pe 3:17).
in which; that is to say, in which Epistles, or in both which. The plural relative is used, as if the First Epistle as well as the Second had been specified.
I stir up your sincere mind in reminding (or, in the way of) reminder). On the formula see Note on chap. 2Pe 1:13. The adjective rendered pure by the A. V. occurs only once again in the N. T., viz. in Php 1:10, where the A. V. translates it sincere, as the R. V. does here. It is derived by some from a root expressive of the clear splendour of sunlight; by others from a root denoting that which is parcelled off by itself; by others still from one signifying that which is purified by rolling or shaking. It seems to mean primarily unmixed, distinct. The cognate noun is found three times in the N. T. (1Co 5:8; 2Co 1:12; 2Co 2:17). The term has a definite ethical sense in the N. T., which goes beyond anything it has in Classical Greek. With a near approach to a complete account Archbishop Trench defines it as a grace which will exclude all double-mindedness, the divided heart (Jas 1:8; Jas 4:8), the eye not single (Mat 6:22), all hypocrisies (1Pe 2:1). While the A. V. gives the plural minds, the original has the singular mind. On the word itself see Note on 1Pe 1:13.
Division 3. (2Pe 3:1-18.)
The death and resurrection of the earth.
And now we come to what has been noticed as peculiar to Peter among the writers of these inspired epistles, although the apostle John will treat of it more in detail in the prophecy which closes the books of Scripture. We may expect from the apostle of the circumcision a reference to that which was already a promise in the Old Testament itself, and which has to do with the judgment, and yet the renovation, of that earth with which Israel’s promises are always connected. The whole fashion of this world is to pass away. As the earth, as we know it now, has had already its baptism of water, so it is yet to have its baptism of fire. The scene of sin and corruption and death must itself be purged from all that reminds of this. And this, as we have already seen in Titus, lies beyond that which we have learnt to speak of as the millennial time of blessing, which is but, after all, “the regeneration,” and not the perfect state, which alone satisfies God. Peter gives us, indeed, but a mere glimpse of this; and the description of the after-prophecy is little more than such a glimpse; yet there is that in it which has the deepest interest and instruction as to the ways of God, ways which are the necessary outcome of His own nature.
1. First of all here, the apostle once more brings before us the lawless ones of the last days, now, indeed, in another character, as infidel scoffers against all that threatens their own security in evil. In stirring up the minds of those he addresses, by putting them in remembrance of the words both of Israel’s holy prophets and of the later commandment of the Lord and Saviour by the apostles, he would have them understand and note especially the coming of mockers in the last days, their infidelity taught them by the lusts they seek to gratify. These have an argument which is already, in certain quarters, beginning to show itself. They ask: “Where is the promise of His coming?” and they assert that all things continue, in fact, as they were from the beginning of the creation. It is the argument of “uniformity,” only thoroughly carried out; and the judgment of God by the flood is ignored as men have of late been seeking to ignore it. What proof have we of the flood that can be derived from the great teacher, science? Science has, in fact, been giving its voice of late in correspondence with Scripture, but it is not welcome to those who desire no supernatural interference of God with the machinery of this world. This is hidden from them, says the apostle; really hidden, so that they may be sincere in it, and yet by the subtlety of their own wills, which so often deceive the keenest. The dependence of the heavens of old upon the word of God, how far is this to be admitted? The earth “subsisting out of water and in water” presents itself as readily in accordance with the fate of that old world overflowed with water. Did it, in fact, perish? or is there some partial flood or a tradition of many different ones that has been mistaken for this? Are there not races that came through it, after all? Are there not races that have no such tradition? Raise a question here, and it is enough. A question, as against Scripture, is always available. We will believe it, if we must, but we must show our readiness, at least, not to believe, if another theory may better approve itself. Let the record of the past be out of the way, and what need we fear as to any prophecy of a fiery judgment which these invalidated memoirs of an old time have preserved for us? It is by the same Word, and no other, that the heavens that are now and the earth have been stored up, reserved for fire against that which has its character as a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. A moral character, as we see, attaches to these things, and will surely loose the tongues of immoral men against them. Yet conscience prophesies too of a judgment to come, a testimony which it costs men much to be able to silence; while the world, as we look at it, spite of all reforms and all outward embellishments of it, is not such that one can readily even believe in a holy God going on with it forever. An anger that vents itself in the destruction of the very material scene which everywhere bears witness of the evil that has defiled it, is, after all, not without its approval in the heart that knows God.
2. But what about this long waiting time, which, as we know, science would enormously protract, in which God has been going on with such a world as this? The apostle has a word to say about this. “Let this not be hidden from you, beloved,” he says, “that one day, with the Lord, is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” In the presence of God’s eternity we must not reckon things just as we are prone to do. After all, how can one compare all the length of time that might be granted, and the largest claim that could be made, with that immeasurable eternity which can furnish no proportion whatever to it? But there is another thing. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some account slackness.” His slackness is but His longsuffering. He “wills not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” This is what is in His heart, His desire for men, however little they may respond to it. Yet that day of the Lord, so slow to come, will yet surely come, and come as a thief, stealing unwelcome upon men who put the thought of it willingly away from them, and thus invite deception. “But the day of the Lord will come,.” “in which the heavens will pass away with a rushing noise, and the elements burning with heat shall be dissolved; the earth also, and the works in it, shall be burned up.” We must not confound this with the coming of the Lord for His saints, nor even with His after-appearing with them, and the judgment which will take place upon the earth when He appears. We have, as we know in the after-revelation, the very interval measured which will be between this judgment of the living and the judgment of the dead before the great white throne; and it is in connection with this last, as Peter also speaks here, that the earth and its works will be burned up. We must realize the difference, too, between “the day of the Lord” and “the coming of the Lord,” and must not wonder if “the day of the Lord” stretch over 1,000 years or more, if it do not reach on, indeed, to eternity. It is the day when the Lord will be once more manifestly supreme, and all opposition to Him be put down with a strong hand. Thus it may begin from the time of that appearing of the Lord itself, and so in its first beginning come as a thief, surprising the world; while, in the course of it further, the earth itself is subjected to His power and things are put into that condition, ready for the coming eternity which the reign of Christ as Man over the earth is ordained to bring about. Every enemy is to be put down, and death itself and Hades cast into the lake of fire; and then, at last, with no enemy or evil occurrent, “the day of the Lord” shall be peace, and nothing else but peace. Christ as “the Father of eternity” shall introduce the reign of peace forever.
3. We come now to the fulfilment of that promise for which we wait. If we are looking for things to be in this way dissolved, “what manner of persons ought we to be, in holy behaviour and godliness,” waiting for and even hastening, with desire, the coming of that day of God when all this shall take place! Beyond it, according to His promise (we can have no evidence of it except that sure and blessed promise, that Word which we must learn to trust here or we shall be beggared forever), there remains for us the cheer of new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. This is manifestly a reference to Isaiah’s word: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered nor come into mind.” It is but a glance, for the prophets of the Old Testament, apart from this, never seem to go beyond that kingdom which we, indeed, have learned to call “millennial,” as having its limits defined for us in this way. For Israel, there was no such necessary limitation; there was a bright scene before them upon which their eyes should rest, assured that whatever might be beyond could only be additional blessing; and the prophet here goes on immediately to speak of God’s creating “Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy,” in terms which very plainly imply the presence of sin, and therefore not an earth upon which dwelleth righteousness, not characterized by that. But we must not on that account lose sight of the distinct character of that which the apostle here, with divine insight, brings forward as what was to be really final -an absolutely “new heavens and new earth.” We have one more reference to it in Isaiah, and that is where the Lord promises that as the new heavens and the new earth which He will make shall remain before Him, so Israel’s seed and their name shall remain. This is naturally taken by many to imply that therefore the new earth itself only speaks here of a temporary, that is, of the millennial condition. If so, it is plainly contrary to what Peter gives us of it here, for it is plain that the dissolution of the heavens and earth that are now is in order to the bringing in of a perfect condition which is to follow it. The picture that we have in the book of Revelation is in complete accordance with this. We have only the alternative, therefore, that this is an absolute promise of God that not only the blessed of Him in Israel shall remain amongst those blessed forever (which, of course, will be true), but that their very seed and name would remain. Here then, of course, is the assertion that Israel has not merely a temporary place as a special people of His upon the earth, but that it will have such a place forever.
But this will involve a difficulty for many. It has often been dwelt upon that when, in the new earth, “the tabernacle of God shall be with men and He will dwell with them,” nations shall have disappeared, with all the distinctions incident to this. It is now henceforth only God and men. Can we, however, press this so far? Exactly the same thing has been thought with regard to the company of the redeemed in heaven, as we know. It has been thought and contended that they are all one company. Spite of the distinctions that we see in such a passage as that in the twelfth of Hebrews, where “the spirits of just men made perfect” (clearly by resurrection) are distinguished from “the assembly of the first-born ones whose names are written in heaven,” it is so generally considered that the Church, which is Christ’s body, is that which has continued through all generations, and which embraces in it all that have ever believed from the beginning, that to speak of any such distinction as is implied here has been thought unwarrantable. Yet very many now have learned to think otherwise, and the passage itself which speaks of “the assembly of first-born ones” must necessarily imply some after-born, who are, therefore, not of this assembly. It may be said, perhaps, that these are millennial saints. Even so, there is a distinction admitted amongst the redeemed. But it may be questioned whether the first-born are that in time, or in place, rather. Israel has been, as we know, God’s first-born upon the earth, and these “first-born ones registered in heaven” are plainly in opposition to the “first-born ones written upon earth.” When God says of Christ even, prophetically, “I will make Him My first-born, higher than the kings of the earth,” it is plainly prerogative and dignity that are in question, rather than time. Again, among the angels, although they are in this passage in Hebrews spoken of as “the universal gathering,” yet we are accustomed to recognize distinctions -authorities, principalities and powers, whatever may be implied in these. The distinction between earthly and heavenly saints must abide. If there be a new earth for those upon earth, the heavenly saints have not their portion there. Thus there is no antecedent argument against Israel’s name remaining forever in connection with the new earth. The redeemed will be all redeemed. The children of God will all be children; but if it please God that all that He has wrought in Israel should be preserved in this way, as a memorial forever, what is there to stumble any in such a thing? In any case, if the “new heavens and the new earth” mean just what the apostle is speaking of here, then it is positively declared by the prophet that Israel’s seed and name shall remain as long as these do. We have no reason whatever to say that the new heavens and the new earth are millennial, simply. To what other promise can Peter refer here than that in Isaiah? There is no other; and the apostle gives this distinctly, not as a new revelation, but as the fulfilment of God’s word of old. Thus we have no alternative, surely, but to take it as it stands. Distance on the part of any from God will indeed be over. Those words of revelation, “The tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He will dwell with them,” are assurance that now, what has always been in God’s heart, what we have seen as revealed in Christ Himself among men,Immanuel, -will be at last fully effectuated. There will be no distance anywhere; but that does not imply that there will be no differences, which, if it be maintained, must be insisted on in the fullest manner -no difference between the Church and Old Testament saints; no difference between the heavenly saints and the earthly; and this would naturally end in what is the thought of many, that the new earth will be the final abode of all these, and that the New Jerusalem itself, therefore, must lose finally its distinctly heavenly character. Scripture surely does not lead to this, nor justify it. The blessing of all will be perfect, but there will be distinct circles of blessing, none the less.
Just a word as to the expression itself, “new heavens and a new earth.” The heavens here are simply the heavens of the earth itself, that is to say, all that is connected with the firmament of the second day. The heavens have too manifestly to do with the earth to be omitted in any description of the final change. The heavens rule the earth, and thus are naturally changed in order to the new condition of things upon it. As we find them connected in the creative account in Genesis, so we find them connected again here at the close. The new earth, let us remember, is new in the same sense that the man in Christ is a new man -not a new individual. It is the same person who was the sinner and is now the saint, but there is a new condition altogether. The millennium, as we have seen in Titus, is the regeneration of the earth; but that is not the prelude to its mere destruction. On the contrary, it is the first step towards abiding blessing and the change of the heavens and the earth; for the coming in of that which is new is as the change upon the body for the saint, when the body itself may be dissolved and everything seem to pass away, the very elements of it dispersed in every direction; and yet there is a resurrection of the dead. The great condition of blessing is announced. Righteousness must be the basis of all, and abiding righteousness upon the new earth means abiding blessing.* Whose heart that has known what it is to “hunger and thirst after righteousness” but must look with expectation for that time? “Wherefore,” says the apostle, “seeing that ye wait for these things, be diligent to be found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless.” How unsuitable for the looking for this condition of perfect righteousness would be the least laxity with regard to it now!
{*We have three distinct relationships of righteousness in connection with three ages. During the present age, it is the basis upon which grace reigns -“Even so might grace reign through righteousness” (Rom 5:21). In the cross and the resurrection of our Lord, God’s righteousness has been manifested and vindicated, and a divine basis laid upon which grace may reign. During the Millennium, righteousness will reign (Isa 32:1). No longer will forbearance wait upon the ungodly, but swift and sure retribution will fall upon the disobedient. During the eternal age there will be no need for the repression of evil, for there will be no evil, save in the eternal prison house of Satan and the lost. But righteousness will dwell, have its house, in the new heavens and new earth. -S.R.}
4. But the apostle closes still with the word of warning. We are to account, as he reminds us again, that the longsuffering of the Lord is salvation. That is His meaning in it. It is not tolerance of evil in any wise, and we must not use it as an argument for any tolerance on our part of what is contrary to Him. The fruit of this longsuffering we are, every one of us: therefore we may well rejoice in it. And Peter has here a tender reference to that beloved brother, Paul, to whom the gospel of salvation was in an eminent way committed. It is the only passage, perhaps, in the New Testament in which we find the commendation of one inspired apostle by another. How suited here, where there had been, as we know, for a moment an apparent breach, which men have worked, after their manner, into a strife between two contradictory systems -Christian both, and which had finally, by some way of compromise, to be brought together and welded into one. Peter’s words here are surely intended in divine wisdom to meet any such thought, and the very letter to the Hebrews is what Peter refers to in this case. “According to the wisdom given unto him,” he says, he “hath written unto you.” Yet here, above all, were, as we know, some of those things hard to be understood which would be found especially by Jews, more or less, in all his epistles. That does not, in Peter’s eyes, evidently, diminish the wisdom of them. There are those who wrest them to their own destruction, but they have to wrest them in order to this, and those who do so are the untaught and ill established -the people who, therefore, have not bent their hearts really to the establishing truth, and have not submitted their souls to the discipline of it. Destruction could not come otherwise to any from the blessed Scriptures, the witnesses of the fulness of God’s love for men; yet even those truly His might need the admonition. God works in this way, by His admonitions; and the apostle bids them, knowing these things before, to beware lest, being carried away with the error of the wicked, they fall from their own steadfastness. He returns in his last words here, to that with which he had begun the epistle. If they would not fall or be carried away, they must “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” They must learn more and more the grace expressed in Christ; for growth in grace is surely, on the other side of it, but growth in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour. In that knowledge he has told us at the beginning, all things are found that pertain to life and godliness. “To Him,” therefore, “be glory, both now and forever.”*
{*Most have noticed the marked similarity between the second chapter of second Peter and the Epistle of Jude. Unbelief would put a slight upon inspiration, claiming that one was but the copy of the other. Faith, however, sees only perfection in the word of God, and where there are difficulties, looks for special reasons for them. Most likely, one of the writers may have had the words of the other before him, and in speaking of the same state, would be led by the Spirit of God to use the same illustrations. But the differences between the two portions are also clearly marked. -S.R.}
Observe here, 1. The design of both St. Peter’s epistles was one and the same, even to put them in remembrance of, and to call to their minds what they had formerly heard and understood, but possibly not retained, nor duly considered. This second epistle I write; in both which I stir up your minds by way of remembrance.
Note, The office of ministers is to be remembrancers, The Lord’s remembrancers, by putting him in mind of the people’s wants; their people’s remembrancers, by putting them frequently in mind of their duty to God. There is then a constant necessity of a conscientious ministry; none are weary of it but such as love not to be remembered of their duty by it.
Nay, farther, St. Peter tells them, he would stir up their pure minds by ways of remembrance; implying, that the memories of the best Christians stand in need of refreshing, and the affections of the holiest want a fresh exciting. The freest Christians sometimes want a spur: We are slow to learn what we should do, and more slow to do what we have learnt.
Great then is the sin of those who contemn repeated truths. Cursed is that curiosity that despises a wholesome truth, because it is common. If we have such nice stomachs that will not endure to eat twice of the same dish, if wholesome; it is just with God, that want should overtake our wantonness.
Observe, 2. What it is that he would have them remember and be mindful of; it is the word of prophecy in the Old Testament, and the doctrine of the gospel in and under the New, That ye be mindful of the words spoken before by the holy prophets, namely, Enoch and Daniel, who prophesied of the general judgment of the last day, and of the destruction of Jerusalem, then at hand.
Observe, 3. How St. Peter here joins the prophets and apostles together, as concuring harmoniously in their doctrine; what was foretold by the prophets was confirmed by the apostles; hence they are said to have but one mouth, Luk 1:1 As he spake by the mouth of all his prophets, not by the mouths; for, though the prophets and apostles were many, yet had they all but one mouth, speaking all the same things.
Words To Trust
2Pe 3:1-2. The doctrines and precepts delivered by the prophets and apostles, being the most effectual means of preserving the Christian converts from being seduced by the false teachers spoken of in the preceding chapter, the apostle begins this with informing the brethren that his design in writing both his epistles was to bring these doctrines and precepts to their remembrance. And as one of the greatest of these mens errors was their denying the coming of Christ to judge the world, and destroy this mundane system, he first exhorts the brethren to recollect what the holy prophets had anciently spoken on this subject, together with the commandments of the apostles of Christ to their disciples, to expect and prepare for these events. His saying, This second epistle I now write, &c., implies that he had written a former one to the same people, and he here affirms that in them both he had one great end in view, which was to stir up their minds (which he terms pure, or rather sincere, as more properly signifies) to keep in remembrance and lay to heart what had been already taught them on these important subjects, so as to be properly influenced by it. The holy prophets intended, who had spoken of these things, were chiefly Enoch, mentioned Jdg 1:14-15; David, Psa 50:1-6; Psa 75:8; and Dan 12:2.
2 Peter Chapter 3
In the last chapter, as we have said, it is materialism: trust in the stability of that which can be seen, in contrast with trust in the word of God which teaches us to look for the coming of Jesus, the return of the Lord. They judge by their senses. There is, say they, no appearance of change. This is not the case. To the eye of man it is indeed true that there is none. But these believers are willfully ignorant of the fact that the world has been already judged once; that the waters, out of which by the mighty word of God the earth came, had for the moment swallowed it up again, all perishing except those whom God preserved in the ark. And by the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. It is not that the Lord is slack concerning the promise of His return, but that He is still exercising grace, not wishing any to perish, but that all should come to repentance. And a thousand years are to Him but as a day, and a day as a thousand years. But the day of the Lord shall come, in which all things will pass away, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat and all that is on the earth will be consumed. Solemn consideration for the children of God, to maintain them in complete separation from evil, and from all that is seen, looking for and hastening the day in which the heavens shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat! Everything on which the hopes of the flesh are founded shall disappear for ever.
Nevertheless, there shall be new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness shall dwell. It is not here said, shall reign, which would be the thousand years of the Lords dominion; here it is the eternal state, in which the government, that has brought all things into order, will terminate, and unhindered blessing will flow from God, the kingdom being given up to God the Father.
It is in following out the ways of God in government that the apostle carries them on to the eternal state, in which the promise will be finally accomplished. The millennium itself was the restitution, of which the prophets had spoken; and, morally, the heavens and the earth had been changed by the imprisonment of Satan and the reign of Christ (see Isa 65:17, Isa 18:1-7 18, Jerusalem having been made a rejoicing); and the heavens indeed entirely cleared by power, never to be defiled by Satan again, the saints on high too in their eternal state, the earth delivered, but not yet finally freed. But, materially, the dissolution of the elements was, necessary for the renewal of all things.
It will be observed, that the Spirit does not speak here of the coming of Christ, except to say that it will be scoffed at in the last days. He speaks of the day of God, in contrast with the trust of unbelievers in the stability of the material things of creation, which depends, as the apostle shews, on the word of God. And in that day everything on which unbelievers rested and will rest shall be dissolved and pass away. This will not be at the commencement of the day, but at its close; and here we are free to reckon this day, according to the apostles word, as a thousand years, or whatever length of period the Lord shall see fit.
So solemn a dissolution of all that the flesh rests upon should lead us so to walk as to be found of the Lord, when He comes to introduce that day, in peace and blameless; accounting that the apparent delay is only the Lords grace, exercised for the salvation of souls. We may well wait, if God makes use of this time to rescue souls from judgment, by bringing them to the knowledge of Himself, and saving them with an everlasting salvation. This, the apostle says, had been taught by Paul, who wrote to them (the Hebrew believers) of these things, as he did also in his other epistles.
It is interesting to see that Peter, who had been openly rebuked before all by Paul, introduces him here with entire affection. He notices that Pauls epistles contained an exalted doctrine, which they who were unstable, and not taught of God, perverted. For Peter in fact does not follow Paul in the field on which the latter had entered. This however does not prevent his speaking of Pauls writings as forming a part of the scriptures; as also the other scriptures, he says. This is an important testimony; which moreover gives the same character to the writings of one who is able to bestow this title on the writings of another.
Let Christians then be watchful, and not allow themselves to be seduced by the errors of the wicked but strive to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and for ever. Amen!
ARGUMENT 4
GODS MILLENNIUM SABBATH
1… In which I stir up your pure mind in remembrance. We are born into the world with the carnal mind, transmitted from Satan through Adam. In regeneration this carnal mind is conquered and grace given to hold it in subjugation, till it is utterly destroyed in sanctification, leaving in you nothing but the pure mind of Christ. The Greek eilikrinee, pure, is from eilee, a sunbeam, and krinoo, to judge. Hence it is a wonderfully strong adjective, describing the mind imparted by Christ in the gracious economy. It simply means a mind or heart so pure, that when illuminated by the infallible Sun of Righteousness, the omniscient eye of God discovers no impurity in it. Oh, how grandly does the Holy Ghost preach Christian perfection!
2. In this valedictory of the senior Apostle, he importunately reminds the saints of their momentous responsibility to hold pertinaciously the words spoken by the holy Apostles and prophets.
3. Knowing this primarily that in the last days mockers in scoffing will come forth, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since our fathers fell asleep, all things remain as from the beginning of creation. We are living amid the fulfillment of the prophecies. Many preachers are now mocking and scoffing at the idea of the Lords near coming. They stand in the popular pulpits and preach evolution (which is really the Ingersoll infidelity), proclaiming to the people that the world is growing better, whereas the Bible says, Wicked men and seducers, i.e., the world, will wax worse and worse even to the end.
5, 6. Here Peter confirms his argument on the worlds deterioration and divine intervention by reference to the antediluvians who waxed worse and worse, till the flood swept them away. While Gods true people progress in wisdom anti-holiness, Satans people make similar progress in knowledge and wickedness. As the antediluvian world increased in wickedness till the flood, so the post-diluvian ages will progress in wickedness till the Lord comes. These pulpit evolutionists and progressionists, whose name is legion at the present day, are leading the people into practical infidelity by ignoring the divine administration and substituting the human. The trend of this preaching is to obscure the epochs of conversion, sanctification and the Lords personal return to the earth, thus taking all epochs out of Christian experience, and running into gradualism, i.e., humanism. Rest assured, when you leave out the epochs you eliminate God and run into infidelity.
7. But now the heavens and the earth have been preserved by the same Word, kept for fire in the day of judgment, and to the destruction of ungodly men. Thus you see Peter proves the future epochs by the past. As the earth was baptized with water when converted to God in Noahs day, so it is to be sanctified by fire, preparatory of its final restitution and celestialization at the end of time.
8. But let this not escape your memory, beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. This brings us the clear revelation that Gods millennial day is a thousand years. Scoffing infidels bring up geology to refute the Mosaic history of creation, as they construe, in six twenty-four hour days. The fact that the sun did not appear till the fourth day does away with the hypothesis of there having been solar days. As here we learn that Gods day is a thousand years, applying the schedule to creation, we have ample time for the geological period discovered by scientists. Many authorities certify to an error of one hundred years in Bishop Ushers chronology, thus winding up the sixth thousandth year with the present century. Regardless of the chronological disparity, we are certainly rapidly approaching the end of Satans week, full of toil, sin, suffering and calamity, and denominated night (Rom 13:12), in contradistinction to the bright day of Eden, which preceded it, and the glorious millennial day destined to follow it.
Oh, glory to God, for the swift retreat of Satans long, dark night, and the glorious dawn of Gods long prayed-for millennial day.
9. Mat 16:28 affirms the probability of our Lords return before the death of the living generation, involving a human contingency which did intervene, postponing the advent. Perhaps He has been waiting these centuries to give time for the accumulation of a sufficient number of charter members to organize His kingdom. It is certainly a great mercy to all who are disposed to appreciate a place in the bridehood for Him to delay till we wash and put on our white robes and get ready to meet Him.
Grotius, with his usual tartness, contends that this is the beginning of a new epistle by Simon, but not Simon Peter. But if so, why did Peter leave the words at the end of the second chapter unclosed, without either greetings or salutations; an abruptness unknown to the apostles. This notion is too vague for refutation.
2Pe 3:1-2. This second epistle is, with one undeviating design, to stir up your pure minds to watchfulness and prayer, and that ye may be mindful of the words of the holy prophets, and also of the cautions repeated by Christ, and by us his apostles, against all false teachers and scoffers at what we say concerning the visitations of God on the jewish nation, and of the fall of the sacred temple. Lactantius says, lib. 4. cap. 21, Petrus et Paulus predicaverunt, &c. Peter and Paul preached at Rome, and what they preached, being written, remained as a record. In which they predicted many astonishing events, and this among others, that after a short time God would send a king who should vanquish the jews, should level their cities with the ground, and besiege them so closely, that they should be so far reduced by famine, as to feed on the bodies of one another. This record is in perfect unison with the holy scriptures.
2Pe 3:3. Scoffers. The heretics described in the preseding chapter, who scoffed at prophecy respecting the fall of Jerusalem, like the filthy sinners which the deluge washed away. See the reflections on Genesis 8.
Ver, 5, 6. The earth standing out of the water and in the water perished. The apostle clearly understood, as stated at large on Genesis 8., that the earth was destroyed by the daily flux and reflux of the sea, attended with incessant rain and clouds of darkness for forty days. The quantity of water, as all modern geologists allow, was not more at the deluge than now, but was concentrated and poured out upon a guilty world, to execute the divine vengeance.
2Pe 3:7. The heavens and the earth are reserved unto fire. See on Psa 50:3.
2Pe 3:8. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years. The time of his second advent may seem long to a suffering church, yet it is not long with him, to whom a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Perhaps Peter alludes to the words of Moses, Psa 90:4 : A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday; which may refer to the deluge, then nearly a thousand years before. The words are cited also by St. Barnabas in his epistle, and referred to, it would seem, by the Erythran Sibyl: all time is short with God, who always is, and ever shall exist. Zosim. Hist. 11:445.
2Pe 3:9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise; he has not retarded its accomplishment, as some might imagine. It is because he awaits with much longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to him by repentance. Mons version.
2Pe 3:10. The earth shall be burnt up. This is foretold in several other passages. Psa 11:6; Psa 50:3. Isa 33:12-14, 2Th 1:8. Well then has the prophet observed, that when Christ shall come to destroy the wicked scoffers at his word, It shall not be as the battle of the warrior, with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but with burning, and fuel of fire. Isa 9:5.
Mr. Mede here in a very learned manner observes, that the heavens and the earth which perished with water in the flood, could mean no more than the deluge exciting confusion of the elements which destroyed the world. Therefore it is not likely that more than this earth will be destroyed at the great conflagration. The Greek word, soikeia, though it agree with the Chaldaic, menalitta, and often signify the planets, the zodiac, or the hosts of heaven; yet he thinks it should here be restricted to the elements, because the three heavens have each their separate hosts. The third or empyreal heavens have angels for their hosts; the second or ethereal heavens have the stars for their hosts; and these lower heavens are inhabited by the fowls, and unclean spirits, which shall be expelled when the earth is refined by fire. Now, as the starry heavens were not affected by our sin, he sees no reason why they should be destroyed, when God shall purge the earth of the guilt and blood of men. To this burning of the world he applies Hag 2:6-7; Hag 2:21-22, which most critics apply to the political heavens. But those awful passages, Jer 4:23; Jer 49:7-22, Ezekiel 25 and Eze 35:12, may perhaps be applied with more propriety. Sacred prophecy is however often mixed in its bearings; hence our Saviour, by an awful climax, proceeds from describing the destruction of Jerusalem to the destruction of the world. On this subject, Sixtus, of Sienna in Italy, has collected the opinions of several gentiles, and of Ambrose, Hilary, and Augustine, which very much coincide with Mr. Mede.
2Pe 3:13. We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth. The margin refers us to Isa 65:17, which must be erroneous, for the new earth there is connected with agriculture, with the procreation of children, with some sin, and some death. He that dies a hundred years of age, shall die a child, but the sinner, though allowed to attain that age, shall be accounted an execration on the earth. Certainly the prophecies of Isaiah regard the glory of the church in the latter day. But under all those exhilirating figures, it is likely that the piercing eye of prophecy went farther, and glanced on the new heavens and the new earth, described in Rev 21:22. Be that as it may, we have the plain promise of Christ. I go to prepare a place for you, a heaven where righteousness shall for ever dwell. Joh 14:3.
2Pe 3:15-16. Our beloved brother Paul hath written unto you. See the introduction to the epistle to the Hebrews. Peter here, without hesitation, calls himself a brother of Paul; and by the phrase, according to the wisdom given unto him, utters the common sentiment of the churches, that Paul was divinely inspired. Which they that are unstable wrest; meaning the jewish sects, and others affecting great regard to the person of Christ. Like the false prophets in Jeremiahs time, they wrested and perverted all the threatenings that Paul and others had denounced against the infidel nation of the jews. This also they did to their own destruction, for not escaping from Jerusalem, as the christians did, they perished in the siege.
2Pe 3:17. Beware lest ye also be led away with the error of the wicked. The caution is in unison with the words of Christ in Luk 21:8; Luk 21:34, and of Paul in 2Th 2:1-2.
2Pe 3:18. Grow in grace, by building up yourselves in your most holy faith, which produces all the fruits of the Spirit, and all the excellence of the christian temper.
To him be glory, both now and for ever. Amen. This doxology comprises the full worship of the church in every form of prayer, adoration, and praise, presented to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The like glory is often ascribed to Christ, as in Joh 13:32. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him, in himself. Also in Joh 17:5. Now, oh Father, glorify thou me with thy own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. To him every knee must bow, and every tongue confess, in the full worship of the gentile world, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Php 2:11. Paul also repeats his ascriptions of praise, when writing to Timothy, saying, To whom be honour and power everlasting. Thus Christ is over all, God blessed for ever. Rom 9:5.
Dr. Macknight on the epistles, like Dr. Campbell on the gospels, may wish to keep his Arianism out of sight, when speaking of Christ and of his glory. But I must protest against many passages as fully coincident with Arianism, passages sported throughout the epistles. Take 1Co 2:8, for an instance. They would not have crucified the Lord of glory; the glorious head of his church, and of the world, and the final judge of men. Now, no Arian would scruple to use those words. But Christ is crowned with glory and honour. Psa 8:6. Christ is the King of glory. Psa 24:6. He is the glory of Jehovah, revealed from heaven. Isa 40:5. This is the age in which we are peculiarly called to hold fast the form of sound words, and make no concessions to the infidel philosophy given as a substitute for genuine christianity.
REFLECTIONS.
As thorns, and briars, and weeds are the constant vexation of the husbandman, so heretical sects have afflicted the church from the beginning. The false teachers, who sought bread, and made a gain of the church, daily disturbed the peace of the saints, and wounded the minds of the apostles, because they destroyed souls, and called them off from peaceful pastures. They wrested and distorted the scriptures to their interest, or their humour, and finally to their own destruction.
This argument of Peter is a happy one to alarm the scoffers, and to comfort the church, that the heavens shall pass away with a great noise; thunders in all the elements, and thunders in new forms; yea, thunders and rendings in all the subterranean world; the kindling of fires, the quenching of volcanoes, the sea and the waves roaring. Nature convulsed to her centre, and the heavens departing as a scrowl of parchment. Where now, oh nations, are your cities? Where now, oh merchants, are your shipping, and the palaces of your princes! But let us profit by the longsuffering of God, which is salvation to all that wait upon him, to all that repent and believe in Jesus. He is not willing that any should perish; and though sinful, they were made in his image, have been preserved by his care, and bought with an inestimable price. Oh what goodness, what love and tender pity towards sinners, who still persist in their revolt. What more can heaven do to save a ruthless race!
But rejoice, ye righteous, in the burning of the world, and the dissolution of the elements. God shall prepare for you new heavens, and a new earth. The virtuous there shall dwell, and evermore delights enjoy. Nothing that mortals have ever seen or known can be compared with the heavens which God will create; the happy kingdom to which he will finally conduct his saints.
The inference is clear and strong; seeing we look for such things, what manner of persons should we be in all manner of temper, of conduct, and deportment? How holy, how wise, how heavenly should we be, seeing we expect the Lord from heaven. Let us grow in grace, by the mortification of sin, and by nourishing the inner man of the heart in all the means of grace. Let us aim at the measure of the stature of Christ. Let us grow by adding to our faith every virtue and adorning of the mind. Let us look on the growth and fruitfulness of the trees and fields, which flourish in their season, and mature their fruits. Let the loveliness of such a state be particularly attractive to us, that when the Lord shall appear, we may have joy at his coming.
2Pe 3:1 f. In this, as in his former letter, he is only reminding them of the OT prophecies and of the teaching of the apostlesthe twofold witness to which he had appealed in ch. 1.
2Pe 3:1. the second epistle: the author again claims identity with Peter, and refers to 1 P.; what he here says is, however, an inaccurate description of 1 P., and if the genuineness of 2 P. is maintained, it is better to suppose that the reference is not to 1 P. but to some other epistle of Peters which has not been preserved.unto you: this has been taken to imply that 2 P. was addressed to some particular church or churches, to which Peter had previously sent an epistle; it is better to regard it (like the references in 2Pe 1:12) as part of the literary drapery of the letter; cf. also 2Pe 3:15.
2Pe 3:2. your apostles: in the parallel passage in Jude (Jud 1:17) the author implies that he was not himself an apostle; some commentators see here a similar disclaimer, but this interpretation is not necessary; the meaning is, those apostles who were your teachers.
2Pe 3:3. On the relation of this verse to Jude, see on Jud 1:18.
This chapter now shows that the government of God will bring everything to a proper conclusion: every evil principle will be judged unsparingly, and those also who embrace such evil; and out of this judgment will emerge precious resurrection state of eternal blessing.
But both of Peter’s epistles have the chief present object of stirring up the pure minds of believers by way of remembrance. He claims to give no new truth, but we greatly to be reminded of that which we have before heard. And this goes back even to prophets of Old Testament times, their ministry being still of vital value for us now. Added to this is “the commandment of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by your apostles.” Note that this is not “commandments,” but singular; that is, that the whole truth of Christianity Is a precious unity: it is “one faith.” The apostles have communicated this, and we have it in written form. It is deeply essential that we should be reminded of it over and over again, for it is vital to our daily welfare.
And Scripture gives us knowledge beforehand of the last days, so that we may be prepared. It is therefore no surprise that mockers have come, those walking in the lusts of self-pleasing, and brazenly deriding the promise of the coming of Christ. Their character, their conduct, and their sayings are all irresponsible and reprehensible. Such characters prove to us that the last days have come; so that they really prove what they strongly deny. But this is always the case with unbelief: it proves itself to be folly.
On the basis of their own opinions these scoffers insist that everything has continued the same from time, immemorial, therefore that there has never been any supernatural intervention in man’s affairs through all history. This is gross ignoring of competent witness, therefore willing ignorance.
For by the word of God there was, before the flood, a similar creatorial order to that of today. The heavens were in their place, the earth was partially covered by water, with much of it also standing out of the water for the benefit of man’s existence. But these waters overflowed the world that then was. Not only were the windows of heaven opened, but “the fountains of the great deep were broken up” (Gen 7:11), which may infer a tremendous tidal wave that engulfed even the highest mountains; and possibly also great volcanic action. But the whole world perished In the flood, only Noah and his family being preserved in the ark. This is history, well authenticated, not only in the accurate record of Scripture, but in the records of many nations.
In the future, however, not only the earth, but also the heavens, will be affected by a far more awesome destruction. For both heaven and earth are “stored with fire.” held in reserve at the present, but in view of the dread judgment of God. Science confirms that not only earth is stored with fire, its volcanic magma ready to burst forth at any time, its gas, oil, coal, and sulphur deposits readily ignitable but also the heavens; for it world take but little change in the component gases of the atmosphere to trigger a conflagration that could engulf the entire world.
And God has decreed the earth’s burning destruction. Only the folly of men causes them to sneer, for it is they themselves who will feel the awful judgment of God.
If they are willingly ignorant, at least let the beloved of God not be ignorant. For with the Lord a thousand years means no more than one day, and vice versa. his viewpoint is not narrow and confined, as is ours. Because of the passage of time, we may accustom ourselves to thinking of anything as in-terminable, depending merely upon our own observation as to this. But let us not be so ignorant.
The Lord is not slack, not lax or undependable, of which, by some men He may be accused; though He is marvelously patient. It is folly to mistake His patience for indifference. If indeed He is long-suffering, yet it is because of His concern for the souls of men, that they might have opportunity to come to repentance, and therefore escape the judgment that must necessarily fall upon a guilty world.
But there is no shadow of doubt as to the reality of the judgment coming. Many have been the signs of this, and the warnings. Yet the world pays little attention, just as has been the case when Mt. St. Helens showed signs of volcanic activity, and warnings were everywhere publicized. Yet the great eruption came suddenly, with no further warning, and many who had ignored the warnings perished.
Similarly, “the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night,” both unexpected and unwelcome. Of course, before this, those redeemed in this day of grace will have been caught up to Heaven to be with the Lord. But the day of the Lord here is seen to refer, not only to the time of His judgment in the tribulation, but to go on to the end of the millennium and the introduction of the eternal state. V.10 is a description of what will transpire at the very time that the great White Throne is set, following the millennium (Rev 20:1-15 :ll). But whatever amount of time may intervene, yet heaven and earth, in its present form, will be demolished.
Verse 11 poses a searching question. Will not a sense of the awesome reality of God’s judgment impending over creation have even now a sanctifying effect upon the hearts and ways of His people? “looking for, and hastening, the coming of the Day of God.” We ought to keep eternity always in view, both in anticipating that great, day, and desiring it with full hearts. It is not that we can make its time arrive more quickly than God has already ordained, but that our attitude is to be one of real, vibrant expectancy, so that in experience, time does not drag for us.
The day of God then refers to the total changing of every-thing, the dissolving of both heaven and earth in its present form, in order that third may give place to a new heaven and new earth. It is new in the sense of being totally altered: its form character will be changed by the awesome power of God. Such is God’s promise, and ardently anticipated. In this eternal condition righteousness shall dwell. In the present day righteousness suffers, in the millennium a King shall reign in righteousness but in eternity righteousness will dwell in perfect peace, with no challenge, no opposition forever. Blessed anticipation!
What reason then for believers to be diligent, in looking for such assured things. It is not here diligence in the work of God that is pressed, but that of being true to proper character. In eternity we shall certainly be “in peace, without spot, and blameless.” Let us show now how positively we believe In eternity!
V.15 adds that we should take into account the fact that the longsuffering of our Lord is not a matter for growing weary, or of discouragement but it is salvation. Since God has an eternal, vital, perfect salvation in mind, the intervening time should be that of vibrant joy and anticipation. This of course touches the dispensational teachings of Paul’s writings, and Peter refers to this, and the wisdom given to Paul from God. V.15 likely refers directly to the book of Hebrews.
V.16 adds that in all of Paul’s epistle the same line of truth is followed, that is, that God’s counsels are calm, deliberate, all things ordered by Divine wisdom, all to take place as He has purposed, while He Himself shows marvelous longsuffering with men. If some of these things are hard to be understood, Peter does not for that reason dismiss them, nor does he excuse, those who are ignorant and unstable for the way in which they wrest these and other Scriptures, that is, twisting their meaning to suit them-selves. Such men are tragically inviting their own destruction. Observe that Peter fully approves Paul’s epistles as Scripture.
For the fifth time in this Chapter believers are addressed as “beloved.” Responsible because knowing these things, we are gently encouraged to be on guard, lest the subtle error or wickedness might so affect us as to lead us astray, The pride of thinking we are able to stand renders us all the more susceptible to a fall from the steadfastness of consistent devotion to the lord.
How precious a preservative in v.18: Growing in grace is in contrast to a legal attitudes it involves deeply learning and valuing the grace of God in Christ Jesus, grace which lifts one above the level of all the surrounding evil. And this is of course vitally connected with the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The better we know Him, the more firmly. our feet shall be kept in the path of devoted obedience. Precious object indeed to fill our hearts both now, and for eternity! — consistent with the endurance of His own glory. The lest expression is rightly translated, “both now and to the day of eternity.” cf.vs.10 & 12.
K4.
Scoffers and Materialism
(2 Peter 3)
In the previous division the apostle has warned us against the false teachers that will be found in the Christian circle. With the passing of the apostles, these false teachers arose speaking perverse things and bringing in destructive heresies (Act 20:29; Act 20:30; 2Pe 1:14; 2Pe 1:15; 2Pe 2:1). In result, the mass of professing Christians fell into the worldliness, lawlessness and corruption that has marked Christendom throughout the ages.
Having then spoken of the false teachers that would arise amongst those to whom he was writing, the apostle passes on to warn us as to the special evils that will mark the Christian profession in the last days (verse 3). He tells us that these last days will be marked by scoffers and materialism.
(Vv. 1, 2). Before speaking in detail of these evils, the apostle prepares us to meet them and fortifies us against them by taking us back to the word of God. He thus opens this last division of the Epistle by saying that he writes to stir up our pure minds by way of remembrance. Then he plainly tell us what we are to remember – the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment … of the Lord and Saviour by the apostles. He does not turn us to the church for guidance; still less does he lead us to look for any fresh revelation, the word of God being complete. He tells us to be mindful of what has already been given by inspiration. In the word of God we have the revelation of the truth that exposes all that is false and enables us to refuse the errors of false teachers as well as the gross materialism of scoffers. The word is the sword used by the Spirit to enable us to stand against the wiles of the devil. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works (2Ti 3:15; 2Ti 3:17).
(Vv. 3, 4). Having thrown us on the word of God to meet the errors of men, the apostle proceeds to warn us against the special evils of the last days of Christendom. He tells us that there will arise within the Christian profession a class of infidel scoffers. As ever, infidelity is associated with a low moral condition. Infidelity has its spring in lust, and these men are described as walking after their own lusts. The man that cannot believe what God says is doing what God forbids. Then we learn what they say, Where is the promise of His coming? They raise questions about an event which they realise will interfere with the gratification of their lusts.
We are first told what these men are – scoffers; then what they do – walking after their own lusts; then what they say – Where is the promise of His coming? Finally, we are told the arguments they use. They assert that it is manifest the Lord will not come to interfere in the affairs of men, for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. This argument is a gross piece of infidel materialism, known in these days as modernism. These men are not merely careless scoffers of the world; they are deliberate scoffers, who advance carefully thought-out arguments in the endeavour to prove that the warnings of the word of God are mere fables and traditions.
It is well to remember that the apostle, in the course of his Epistle, clearly shows that there is a future for the godly, the ungodly and the material creation. In the first chapter he tells us that the godly are passing on to the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: in the second chapter he tells us that the ungodly are passing on to judgment and perdition; while in this third chapter he foretells that the material creation will end in dissolution. All these great events await the power and coming of our Lord (2Pe 1:16). Thus we can understand, on the one hand, why this great event has such a prominent place in Scripture, and, on the other hand, why this great truth is the special object of the enemy’s attack. To none is the truth of the Lord’s coming so obnoxious as to those in the Christian profession who are walking after their own lusts. Such will seek to deny an event that they dread by arguing that it is contrary to all experience, and therefore unreasonable and impossible.
(V. 5). In the verses that follow, the apostle exposes the folly of the infidel arguments of these materialists. Already he has prepared us to meet these infidel objections by the word of God. Now he falls back upon the word to expose their foolish reasoning. In asking, Where is the promise of His coming?, they admit that the promise of Christ’s coming exists. So oft repeated is this promise in the word that it would be folly to deny it is there. Hating the truth of the promise, and not being able to deny its existence, they are driven to give up the word to get rid of the promise. They acknowledge it is there, but refuse to believe what God says.
They go even further, for they deny that God has said it by calling in question the inspiration of the word. Turning from the word, they draw conclusions from the material creation. They speak of the beginning of the creation, thus admitting there was a beginning, but, their wills being opposed to God, they seek to account for creation by natural causes. The believer, however, knows that by the word of God the heavens were of old and that the earth emerged from the waters to become the habitation of man.
(V. 6). Moreover, these scoffers say that all things continue as they were since the fathers fell asleep. Reasoning from what they see, they draw conclusions as to what will be. Turning from things seen, and taking its stand upon the word of God, faith knows that such arguments are utterly false. So far from things continuing as they were from the beginning of creation, there have been striking interventions of God in judgment. The flood is the outstanding witness of the intervention of God upon the ordinary course of nature. When the wickedness of men came to a head, and after they had refused to listen to His word preached through His servant, God intervened in the judgment of the flood by which the world that then was perished.
Accepting God’s account of the flood, faith knows with certainty that God can and has already intervened upon the ordinary course of nature, and that what God has done, He can and will do again in regard to the heavens and earth which now are.
(V. 7). If God brought the world into being by His word, He can surely end it by His word. If God has intervened in judgment, He can do so again. Thus the apostle tells us, the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
To sum up the apostle’s statements, we learn:-
First, that by His word God created the heavens and the earth.
Secondly, by His word God intervened in a judgment that brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly, so that the world that then was perished.
Thirdly, by His word the present heavens and earth are reserved unto fire against the day of judgment of the ungodly men of the present generation.
In the light of the facts revealed by Scripture, we can understand that the unbelieving modernist denies the inspiration of Scripture in order to get rid of the witness of the flood and the promises of the coming of the Lord with its consequent divine intervention in the course of the world and judgment of the ungodly.
(Vv. 8-10). The apostle has exposed the foolish arguments of the scoffing materialist who, willingly ignorant of the word of God, takes occasion by the delay in the fulfilment of God’s promise to deny that the Lord is coming. He now entreats the beloved of the Lord not to be ignorant of the reason for this delay. First, let the believer remember that what may seem a long delay in our eyes is but a brief moment with the Lord, for one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Secondly, let us never forget that the promise of His coming is His promise, and that His word cannot fail. Thirdly, there is a reason for the delay. It is not that the Lord is slack in the fulfilment of His promise, but that He is longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. In His grace God gives space for repentance before the judgment falls; in his unbelief man take occasion by the delay to deny that judgment will ever come.
Nevertheless, in spite of the delay in the fulfilment of His promise, and in spite of what scoffers might say, the day of the Lord will come, in which the heavens will pass away and the works of the earth will be burned up. The apostle does not speak of the coming of the Lord for His saints, or of the appearing of the Lord with His saints; he speaks of the day of the Lord that will be introduced by these great events. It is the day when the Lord will be supreme on the earth and rule with a rod of iron, putting down all opposition to God with a strong hand. This day is introduced by the appearing of the Lord, but will stretch on through the thousand years’ reign, finally introducing the eternal state by the last great intervention of God in judgment. Then the whole face of nature will be altered, for the elements shall melt with fervent heat and all trace of the great works by which men have sought to glorify themselves through the ages will disappear, for the works that are therein shall be burned up. The apostle takes up the language of prophetic Scriptures which, he has already told us, are as a light shining in a dark place (See Psa 102:26; Isa 34:4, Isa 66:22; Mic 1:4; Zep 3:8).
To listen to these scoffers and deny the promise of His coming is to be left in darkness, hopelessly drifting on to eternity, not knowing how all the evil of an ungodly world will be dealt with or how the godly will be brought into eternal blessing; for, be it remembered, whether it be the judgment of the ungodly, or the blessing of the godly, all will be reached by the coming of Christ. Let go the promise of His coming and all is lost to our souls!
(Vv. 11-13). Faith, however, clings to the promise of His coming and, doing so, knows with certainty that all the seen things of the present order of the world will be dissolved. As ever, faith in activity must have an effect upon our lives. It will lead to a life of holy separation from the world around that is going to be dissolved and separation to the life of godliness which the apostle has so blessedly unfolded in the beginning of his Epistle. Thus walking, we shall be looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, when every form of evil will disappear for ever.
Moreover, faith does more; it has a long outlook and carries us beyond judgment into new heavens and a new earth. As we take heed to the prophetic word, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, the dawn of a glorious day begins to arise before faith’s vision, and the day star – the One whose coming will introduce the day – will get His rightful place in our hearts. We, says the apostle, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth. It is not according to our imaginations, or according to our feelings, but according to His unfailing word – His promise. For the second time the apostle reminds us that it is His promise and, being His, will surely be fulfilled (verses 9 and 13).
Further, we learn the character of the new heavens and the new earth. It will be a scene wherein dwelleth righteousness. Every form of corruption and violence, lust and lawlessness characterises the present world; abiding righteousness will mark the new creation. It will not be the reign of righteousness as in millennial days, which implies the presence of evil to be held down. In the new scene, evil having been dealt with, righteousness will dwell.
(Vv. 14-16). Again the apostle appeals to believers to let this glorious future have a present effect upon their lives. The knowledge that this present world is devoted to judgment should lead to a separate walk in godly fear. The knowledge of the coming blessedness of the new heavens and the new earth should keep us in peace, without spot, and blameless. The appalling condition of Christendom in the last days, as depicted by the apostle, might in itself distract and disturb the soul. The prospect of this new scene will keep us seeking so to walk that when Christ comes we shall be found of Him walking in calm peace, unspotted by the present world, blameless in our lives, and waiting in patience, knowing that the longsuffering of the Lord is salvation. We may well challenge our hearts with the question, How will He find us when He comes? (See Luk 12:37; Luk 12:38; Luk 12:43; 2Pe 3:14).
In terms of affection the apostle links Paul with himself as a witness of these things to the Hebrew believers. He speaks of Paul’s writings as forming part of the Scriptures and warns us that there are those untaught and ill-established who wrest his writings, as well as other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
(Vv. 17, 18). Having put us in remembrance of these things, and warned us against false teachers, against scoffers of the last days, and those who wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction, the apostle finally warns us against being led away by the terror of the wicked, thus losing our assurance by falling from the steadfastness that is proper to the believer.
We are to seek to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. For the fifth time in this short Epistle our blessing is connected with the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2Pe 1:2; 2Pe 1:3; 2Pe 1:8; 2Pe 2:20). The apostle has pressed upon us the value of the prophetic Scriptures, the commandments of the apostles, and the deep importance of resting upon the Word of God, but he realises that mere know-ledge of the letter will not keep us. Scripture is only rightly used as we gain through the word a deeper knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him is the glory both now and for ever. Amen. Let us not forget that little word now. We all admit that glory will come to Him for ever, but we may well challenge our hearts by asking, Is He getting glory from our lives even now?ommentare hier eingeben
3:1 This {1} second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in [both] which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:
(1) The remedy against those wicked enemies, both of true doctrine and holiness, is to be sought for by the continual meditation of the writings of the prophets and apostles.
V. THE PROSPECT FOR THE CHRISTIAN 3:1-16
Peter turned from a negative warning against false teachers to make a positive declaration of the apostles’ message to help his readers understand why he wrote this letter. His language had been strong and confrontational, but now he spoke with love and encouragement in gentle and endearing terms.
"While in chapter 2 the writer delivered a fervid denunciation of the false teachers and their immorality, in this section he renews his pastoral concern to fortify his readers in regard to another aspect of the danger facing them, namely, the heretical denial of Christ’s return." [Note: Hiebert, Second Peter . . ., p. 135.]
"In the third chapter Peter refutes the mockers’ denial of Christ’s return (2Pe 3:1-7), presents the correct view concerning Christ’s return (2Pe 3:8-13), and concludes with timely exhortations to his readers in view of the dark and dangerous days facing them (2Pe 3:14-18)." [Note: Idem, "Directives for Living in Dangerous Days," Bibliotheca Sacra 141:564 (October-December 1984):330-31.]
I like to think if the Book of 2 Peter as a bologna sandwich. Chapters 1 and 3 are the bread, the positive pastoral exhortations, and the middle chapter, 2, is the bologna of the false teachers.
A. The Purpose of This Epistle 3:1-2
Peter’s first letter was most likely 1 Peter. Of course, Peter may have written many epistles, so we cannot be sure that 1 Peter is in view. [Note: Bigg, p. 289.] The apostle implied that he wrote this present letter soon after the earlier one. This second epistle, he said, went to the same audience in northern Asia Minor (cf. 1Pe 1:1), primarily Gentile Christians. His purpose in writing the second letter was to refresh his readers’ memories (cf. 2Pe 1:13). "Sincere" means unflawed by evil. He gave his readers credit for not having embraced the teaching of the heretics yet.
"An effective antidote to false doctrine is to recall and dwell on the teaching already perceived." [Note: Andrew McNab, "The General Epistles of Peter," in The New Bible Commentary, p. 1149.]
"The English ’sincere’ is from the Latin words sine cera, ’without wax.’ Some pottery salesmen would use wax to cover cracks and weak places in pottery. Such a cover-up could be detected only by holding the jug up to the sun to see if any weaknesses were visible. Such a vase was ’sun-judged’ (the lit. meaning of the Gr. eilikrines). God wants His people to have sun-judged minds, not those in which their sin spots have been covered over." [Note: Gangel, p. 875.]
Chapter 26
AS WERE THE DAYS OF NOAH
2Pe 3:1-4
IN the previous chapter the Apostle showed how the renegade false teachers had published among the brethren their seductive doctrine declaring that Gods fatherly discipline was something which they need not undergo, that the trials which He sent them might be escaped, and the natural bent of mans heart indulged as fully as they pleased. The foul results of such lessons, both to the flock, and to the teachers, he also depicted in such wise as to render them abhorrent. Now he tells of a further lesson which these guides on the downward road added to the former. Those who do not accept Gods judgments here soon go on to deny the coming of judgment hereafter. It could hardly be otherwise. The wish is father to the thought as truly in matters of faith as of practice. Men whose lives are all centered on this world must try and convince themselves, if possible, that the day of the Lord, of which Gods word speaks so often, is a delusion, and may be cast out of their thoughts. This these men did, and it is against this scoffing of theirs that St. Peter directs his exhortation in this chapter.
“This is now, beloved, the Second Epistle that I write unto you.” Judging from the adverb which he uses () now, (already), we should conclude that no long time had elapsed between the Apostles first letter and the second. And by calling this the second, he shows that it is intended for the same congregations as the former, though he has not named them in the salutation with which the letter opens. Afore-time they had been tried by inward questionings, and he sent them his exhortation and testimony that, spite of all their trials, this was the true grace of God which they had received, and therein they should stand fast. {1Pe 5:12} Now the danger is from without false doctrine and evil living as its consequence. So, though he may have written but a little while ago, he will neither spare himself nor neglect them. For the danger is of the utmost gravity. It threatens the overthrow of all true Christian life.
“And in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance.” Mark how trustfully he appeals to the sincerity of the minds of the brethren, just as before {2Pe 1:12} he said they knew the things of which he was putting them in remembrance, and were established in the truth which they had received. And what he means by the “mind” we may see from 1Pe 1:13, where he uses the same word: “Gird up the loins of your mind”-do not indulge vain, lax, and speculative opinions, as though these would forward you in your travel through the world-“be sober, and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you.” A mind so braced looks onward to the revelation of Jesus Christ, looks for every token of its drawing nigh. And because it is sincere, the man dare look into its inmost recesses, and by self-examination and discipline maintain its purity. He can think soberly of the Lords coming because he is preparing for it. But he whose mind is dark, within whom the light has been turned into darkness, dare not think on these things, but with all his might endeavors to forget, ignore, and deny them. All that St. Peter thinks needful for these Asian brethren is that he should remind them. He knows that mens minds are prone to slumber, especially about the things unseen as yet; and his aim is to rouse them to thorough vigilance. But he has no new lesson to give them.
“That ye should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets.” On few themes do the prophets dwell more earnestly than on those visitations of Jehovah which they publish as the coming of the day of the Lord. With Joel {Joe 2:2; Joe 2:32} it is to be a time great and terrible, the prospect of which is to move men to repentance, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered. And Israel were taught in many ways that this great day was constantly at hand. They were pointed to it by Isaiah {Isa 13:6} when the overthrow of Babylon was foretold. For that nation the day of the Lord was coming as destruction from the Almighty. Jeremiah {Jer 46:10} and Ezekiel {Eze 30:3} preach the same lesson with the ruin of Egypt for their text. It is a day of vengeance, when the Lord God of hosts will avenge Him of His adversaries; a day of clouds, in which a sword shall come upon Egypt, and her foundations shall be broken down. By what they beheld around them Gods people were to learn that a like day would come upon them also, upon everything that was high and lifted up against God; and for those who were unprepared another prophet {Amo 5:18} declared that it would be darkness, and not light. Before its coming, therefore, they were urged {Zep 2:3} to turn to the Lord, that they might be hid in the day of His anger. For God designed by it to make Himself King of all the earth, {Zec 14:9} wherefore it would be great and terrible. For though Elijah should first be sent {Mal 4:5} to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, in its manifestation that day should still be like a refiners fire to purge the evil from among the good.
Not without solemn purpose were all these words written aforetime, and the Christian preachers who felt that God was faithful were sure that such a day would come upon all the earth. How it would be manifested was for God, and not for them. Some of those who lived when St. Peter wrote beheld part of its accomplishment in the overthrow of the Holy City. But they felt-and their lesson is one for all time-that it is presumptuous in men to compute Gods days, and that it is rebellious blindness not to acknowledge the coming of His day continually in the great crises of history. How many a time since St. Peter spoke has the Lord proclaimed by partial judgments the certainty of that which shall come at the last. The day of the Lord is attested when empires fall, when hordes of barbarians break in upon the civilized world that has grown careless of God, when convulsions rage like those which preceded the Reformation and which shook Europe at the French revolution, and we may add to these the troubles which harass our own land today. All these things preach the same doctrine; all proclaim that verily there is a God that judgeth the earth. Not yet is the voice of prophecy silent. Oh, that men would but remember how long and how surely it has been speaking!
“And the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.” In connection with the subject on which he is writing, the commandment of Jesus to which St. Peter alludes can hardly be other than that which occurs in the address of our Lord to His disciples after His last visit to the Temple: “Watch, therefore, for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh; therefore be ready, for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh.” {Mat 24:42} And with the last judgment in his thoughts, we cannot fail to be struck with the frequency with which the Apostle in this letter repeats as the title of Christ “the Lord and Savior”. {2Pe 1:1; 2Pe 1:8} This precise form occurs in no other part of the New Testament. And it seems from the Apostles use of it as though, while speaking of the certainty of the coming of the day of the Lord, he desired to give special prominence to the thought that to such as were looking for Him He would manifest Himself as the Savior and Redeemer.
The words “your apostles” also appear to be used with design. They contain a direct acknowledgment of the mission of St. Paul as an apostle. By him more than by any other had these regions been brought to the knowledge of Christ, and we may rest confident that the gospel which he preached elsewhere he preached to them also. The lesson of watchfulness is oft repeated in his letters. To the Corinthians he writes, “Watch ye; stand fast in the faith; quit you like men; be strong,” {1Co 16:13} while, in connection with this subject of the day of the Lord, his words to the Thessalonians are, “Ye yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night But ye are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Let us watch and be sober”. {1Th 5:2-6} St. Peters letter was to be read in those Galatian Churches whose members in past days had doubted about the apostolate of St. Paul. Its warnings would sink the deeper because enforced by the authority of him who even in his rebukes had spoken to them as his “little children”. {Gal 4:19}
“Knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery.” St. Peter says the mockers will come; Polycarp says in his day they had come. He terms them the firstborn of Satan, and tells how they pervert the oracles of the Lord to their own lusts and deny that there is either resurrection or judgment. The signs of the times were not difficult to read; and the Apostle would have the brethren know what to look for, know in such wise that they should not be shaken in mind by what they saw or heard. For this the first need was Christian sobriety. Thus settled, they could ponder on the words of ancient prophecy and recall the lessons of those who had spoken to them in the name of Christ; and therewith their hearts might take comfort, and their heads be lifted up with expectation, knowing the last days were bringing their redemption nearer. The mockery of the sinners would keep no bounds. This he expresses by his emphatic words, just as largeness of blessing is described: “In blessing I will bless thee.”
“Walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming?” They would be a law unto themselves, and so they followed an evil law. As sinners before them had said, “Our lips are our own,” {Psa 12:4} so these men by act and word alike proclaimed, “Our lives are our own, to use as we please. We have no account to give.” Thus they made themselves bond slaves to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, and, with these fetters heavy about them, boasted of their liberty. They strengthened themselves in their evil way by jeering at the thought of Christs return to judgment. “We have heard of the promise,” they said, “but we see no signs of its fulfillment. The angels, you say, spake of His return when He was taken away from you. Let Him make speed and hasten His coming, that we may see it. You are forever speaking of it as sure and pointing us back to the ancient Scriptures, as though they were a warrant for what you preach. Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come now”. {Jer 17:15}
“For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Here the mockers pass from the promise of Christs return, and fall back upon the more distant records as supplying a stronger argument. “The fathers” of whom they speak cannot be the Christian preachers. Not many of them could as yet have fallen asleep in death. But the ancient prophets of the Jewish Scriptures had long ago passed away, and against them the scorners direct their shafts. “Centuries ago,” they urge, “the prophetic record was closed; and its final utterance was of the day of the Lord, which has not yet come.” Their word “fell asleep” may have also been used as part of their mockery, classing the words of prophecy among baseless dreams. It may be they intended a special allusion to that one among the prophets who dates the time of the Lords coming. Daniel {Dan 12:12} speaks of a waiting which shall last a thousand three hundred and five-and-thirty days. But say these scorners, “When his word was complete, he was bidden, Go thou thy way till the end be. For thou shalt rest, and shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days. He has fallen asleep, and the other fathers also. They all are at rest, and the end of the days is no nearer. The world stands fast, and will stand. It has seen no change since it was brought into existence.”
Those who in faith clung to Christ could not fail, as they heard these scorners, to think of the Masters question, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith in the earth?,” {Luk 18:8} and of those other words of His which told them that the last days should be a parallel to the days of the Deluge: “As were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of man. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall be the coming of the Son of man”. {Mat 24:37-39} The strong earth was under the feet of those antediluvian mockers, the firmament above their heads. So in ignorance they jeered at what they would call the folly of Noah. But the Flood came, and then they knew. Yet the last days have seen, and will see, men as blind and as full of satire and scoffing as they.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
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Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
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Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Fuente: Grant’s Numerical Bible Notes and Commentary
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: John Darby’s Synopsis of the New Testament
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Smith’s Writings on 24 Books of the Bible
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary