Grace Bible Church Gillette, Wyoming

1. The mockers maintained that all has been the same since the beginning of creation. Nothing new has happened and all has remained the same. Therefore, Christ is not going to return. However, Uniformitarianism’s blunder is that they fail to see the important premises.

2. “Maintain” is from the Greek root thelō (desire or will) which can carry the idea that the mockers have “willingly” allowed certain truths to escape their notice. As the NET translates, “they deliberately suppress this fact.”

3. Primarily they have suppressed the fact of how all things came into being. Creation was a supernatural act of divine power of God.

4. In fact, God did not struggle to create the world, but merely spoke the heavens and the earth into existence by the word of God (Heb 11:3).

5. When Peter stated that the heavens existed long ago, he was not arguing for an old earth in opposition to a young earth.

a. Like any Jew of Peter’s day, he would have taken the Bible’s account of the six literal days of creation (Gen 1:5), the creation of man on the sixth day (Gen 1:26-27), and the genealogies of men to determine the age of the earth, similar to Bishop Ussher’s 6,000 years.

b. According to John Whitcomb, taking into account some ambiguity in the genealogies, the earth’s age is approximately 6-10,000 years old.

6. Notice that when God created the world, He formed it out of water and by water.

a. In the first stage of creation, after the second day, the primeval earth material was surrounded by vast waters above the firmament and suspended in other waters under the firmament (Gen 1:7). The waters beneath the firmament (the expanse of the troposphere) later were either formed into seas or confined in a great deep beneath the earth’s crust. (Defender’s Bible, ICR)

1) The earth’s surface was originally water (Gen 1:2).

2) An expanse was created between the waters (Gen 1:6-8).

3) The waters were gathered into one place, called “seas,” and dry land appeared (Gen 1:9-10).

B. Lord Destroyed the Earth through the Flood (2Pe 3:6)

1. These mockers have neglected the fact of the universal Flood which destroyed the earth by the power of God. How is that for supernatural?

2. God spoke the world into existence and He also spoke judgment upon the earth by way of the universal flood.

3. Water sustained life on the earth and water also “destroyed” (apollumi - destroy, kill, bring to ruin, cf. Mat 2:13; 8:25) life on the earth.

4. God carried out His judgment on a sinful world in that the world was “flooded” (katakluzō - inundate, overwhelm, flood, Eng. cataclysm) with water.”

a. This regime [of the two expanses of water] apparently continued until the time of the great Flood when they all came together again. Until then the earth was standing (Greek sunistemi that is, being sustained) in and by the waters. The earth is, in fact, uniquely the water planet. (Defender’s Bible, ICR)

1) The floodgates were opened on the earth and in the sky at the time of the Flood (Gen 7:11-12) and closed after the Flood (Gen 8:2).

2) The floodgates of either the sky or the earth could not have been local but universal. It was a catastrophic judgment upon the entire sinful world. Only Noah and his family were saved in the ark (2Pe 2:5).

C. Lord will Destroy the Heavens and Earth (2Pe 3:7)

1. The mockers were willfully ignorant of the fact that by the same divine power, God will speak (by His Word) judgment against the present heavens and earth.

2. Fire is often associated with judgment in the Scriptures, both from God’s response against sin (Isa 66:15-16; Dan 7:9-10; 2Th 1:6-8) and judgment itself (Mic 1:4; Mal 4:1; Mat 3:10-12).

3. Unbeknownst to these unbelieving mockers, when Christ returns, He will come with “eyes a flame of fire” (Rev 19:12) and the final destiny of the unbelieving will be the “Lake of Fire” (Rev 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15).

4. This is not to say that this is the only future event. Indeed, there are numerous events that will take place before the destruction of the heavens and the earth, especially the Second Coming of Christ, the point of Peter’s rebuttal.

5. But the Lord will destroy the heavens and the earth after He judges sinful man on the day of judgment at the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev 20:11-13).

6. Though this is the destruction of ungodly men it does not mean Annihilationism (cease to exist). Rather, “destruction,” which comes from the same root as verse 6, refers to eternal punishment of the wicked (Mat 25:41, 46; Joh 5:29; Rev 20:10).

7. Nevertheless, Peter has already taught them that the righteous will be spared (2Pe 2:9; Mal 3:16-18).

D. Lord is Timeless (2Pe 3:8)

1. This verse has been misinterpreted by so many for various reasons. It does not support the Day-Age Theory by which each day of the creation week was actually long periods or ages.

a. Peter’s context is not the creation week but rather the coming judgment and the Lord’s longsuffering in executing it (2Pe 3:9).

b. The context deals with those who deny God’s supernatural power and foolishly hold to uniformitarian and evolutionary processes.

c. Peter is not revealing God’s time equation. Rather, Peter is revealing in metaphoric terms (“is like”) that God is longsuffering in bringing judgment.

d. The second part of Peter’s equation should be equally valuable. If so, we could assert that the two thousand years between Adam and Abraham was only two days. However, that is absurd, but so is the first misinterpretation.

2. Peter was paraphrasing Moses in Psa 90:4 which says, “For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or as a watch in the night.”

3. They were not to let the fact escape that God’s perspective on time is eternal. The amount of earthly time that passes is of no consequence from Gods timeless perspective. A moment is no different from an eon, and eons pass like moments to the eternal God. (MacArthur Commentary).

4. To an omniscient God, time remains in the eternal present. In other words, to a timeless God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. Therefore, no matter how long it has been, if God prophesied the 2^nd Coming, it will come to pass in the Lord’s timing.

IV. OBSERVATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

A. World History

1. The heavens and the earth which were of old (II Peter 3:5) were destroyed by water. The heavens and earth which are now will be destroyed by fire (II Peter 3:10). Finally new heavens and a new earth (II Peter 3:13) will last forever. In the interim of the present cosmos, processes indeed are under the domain of conservation, or even uniformity (note Genesis 8:22). (Defender’s Bible)

B. Willing Suppressors

1. It is remarkable that such a universally dominating theory of origins, meaning, and destiny could be based on absolutely no genuine evidence at all! There is no scientific or historical evidence that any significant evolutionary changes have ever taken place, and the most basic laws of science (the laws of probability and thermodynamics) prove that genuine macro-evolution could not happen at all. As Peter prophesied, this belief would be based on willful ignorance. They [suppress the truth and they] are without excuse (Rom 1:18-20). (Defender’s)

C. Word of God is Powerful

1. God brought the world into existence by His Word (2Pe 3:5 cf. Psa 33:6-7; Heb 11:3).

2. God is sustaining the world by His word (Heb 1:3 cf. Col 1:17; Act 17:28).

3. God will remove the heavens and the earth by His Word (2Pe 3:7, 10; Mat 24:35).

4. God’s Word accomplishes His purposes (Isa 55:10-11), endures forever (Isa 40:8 cf. 1Pe 1:24-25), warns unbelievers (2Pe 3:7), promises the believer (2Pe 1:19), and nurtures the believer (1Pe 2:2).

Grace Bible Church · 4000 E. Collins Rd · PO Box #3762 · Gillette, WY · (307) 686-1516