Wednesday Bible Study: The end of all things- 2 Peter

 

In a recent couple of "The Better Part" posts, I mentioned how King Ahaz- and the people- and by analogy today's Church- threw out the TOOLS of worship.  One of those common Bible tools to help the understanding of a passage is the seven stairsteps: three up to the top, three back down, each opposing level having something to do with the other.  I see that in 2 Peter from v 3 to v 11:

2Pe 3:3  ...knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.
2Pe 3:4  They will say, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation."
2Pe 3:5  For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God,
2Pe 3:6  and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
2Pe 3:7  But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
2Pe 3:8  But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
2Pe 3:9  The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
2Pe 3:10  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
2Pe 3:11  Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness...

Let me now take you to the stairs, one pair at a time.

Level one: VV3-4, V11

On the one side we have the scoffers, who disregard God by the simple tool of, "It's been 2 millennia, and he still hasn't shown up?"  I recently encountered this in a couple of people who argued from a book that said we wait in vain for Christ's return as "His judgment came in 70 AD when the Romans burned Jerusalem."  You don't have to deny God DIRECTLY to be a scoffer; all you have to do is IGNORE His word.

The step on the other side challenges you, given what God DID say in His Word, how should YOU see it, and act upon it?

Level two: VV 5-6; V 10

Here, the scoffers conveniently forget- or, in modern times, find excuses wrapped in science to not believe- that God judged this world once, one way, in the Flood; and promised to judge it again, this time in fire.  And it will be a swift judgment, and scoffers such as Peter is referencing, neither had time to repent at the first one-

Luk 17:26  Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.
Luk 17:27  They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Luk 17:28  Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot--they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building,
Luk 17:29  but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all--
Luk 17:30  so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

And they won't have the time when the last one falls.

Level Three: V7; V 9

Judgment is a promise; everything needed for it is ready to go.  The only thing holding them up is God's patience in getting every last soul who would know Him to know Him.

Keystone- V 8

The same concept that defied the two on FB and the author they followed- they didn't have God's perspective.  Too many times, so called intellectuals try to reduce God down to a bite-sized morsel they can understand.   Atheists DEMAND it as a condition of belief.  But the fact of the matter is, God is big, God is vast, and while He humbled Himself to become human to wash away our sins, He's not going to be humbled to suit the self-glorification of man.