2 Peter 3:1-9, Beloved Reminders (1)

Peter is writing to stir up our pure minds by way of reminder.  He wants us to believe both what was spoken before by the holy prophets as well as what the apostles of the Lord have said.  So what do they say that we should remember?

·        Beloved: what do we know? 

o   We know truth about the past, v5-6.  In v5 Peter refers to creation.  Because we have the Word of God, the Creator, we know that earth was originally covered by water (Gen. 1:1-2), that on the second day of creation the water above was separated from the water below (Gen. 1:6-8), and that the water below was gathered into seas and dry land appeared (Gen. 1:9-10).  Peter takes this as fact and expects us to do the same.  In v6 he refers to the flood (Gen. 6-9).  Again, he considers the record to be factual, that a catastrophic flood covered the entire earth.  In other words, the record of God’s judgment was true.  In the same way promises of future judgment should be considered to be true.  

This reminds me of Jesus who, when warning the people of Israel that there was a day of judgment coming that would bring about the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem, quoted the prophet Jeremiah, saying you have made it (the temple) a den of thieves (Luke 20:46; Jer. 7:11).  Jeremiah spoke these words when he was warning the people of the same things, the destruction of the temple and city by the Babylonians.  Coming judgment need not be a surprise: we know it has happened in the past.  This is the foolishness of a theory that counts on millions and even billions of years of the same, uniform evolving of the universe.  Both creation and the flood are catastrophic events that are fundamental to the earth as we know it.

o   We know truth about the present and future, v7.  We know that God the Creator is also God the Sustainer of all things.  The same word that made the heavens and earth are preserving them for the day of judgment and perdition (destruction) of ungodly men.  The last world-wide judgment was by water; the next will be by fire according to God’s word.

o   We know truth about God, v8-9.  There are four perfections of God that Peter reminds us of in this passage.  Let us note the first and then continue to think on these things in our next post.

§  God is eternal.  Peter is reflecting on Psalm 90:4 which speaks of a day with the Lord as being like a thousand years.  We need to be sure we read this correctly: the word “as” is important.  This passage has been taken by some to aid in calculating dates for the return of Christ.  But it does not say “a day is a thousand years”; it says a day is “as” a thousand years.  The point is that God is eternal.  He has a sense of time that we finite beings cannot appreciate.  To us it seems a long time since Christ ascended; we will grow impatient if we do not submit to God’s perspective.