One of the sad statements of our time is that folks who believe Christ will return in our modern day, take their cues from the newspaper, rather than believing God. We have become newspaper exegetes, believing and preaching the end is near, because of “all the evil” we see in the world around us. We simply cannot fathom the thought that Jesus would ever permit such evil to continue to occur without doing something about it. Well, he has done something about it. He left us the Gospel to preach, and this has already and will continue to change the world, but that’s another subject for another time.
The point of this study is that folks actually believe that God intends to judge the world sometime in our future and will eradicate all evil people from the globe and / or destroy the earth in the process Is this true? No! Of course it isn’t true. God knew from the very beginning that many people would not obey him. He is a very realistic God and doesn’t intend to destroy his creation, simply because some folks won’t be obedient (cf. Genesis 6:5; 8:21).
Nevertheless, lots of folks believe the Bible teaches the end of the universe or the end of time, and they mold their other beliefs about God and man around this central doctrine that God will one day bring all things to a catastrophic end. This is nothing more than a ‘doctrine of man,’ and the fruit of such a doctrine is fear, and it is as evil as its fruit has been. Not only are the people who follow such teachers afraid of the future, but even some folks who aren’t their disciples, but listen to their jargon, are afraid of those things that ‘might’ occur.
The problem is that the people who teach such doctrines, basing their understanding upon what they read in the Bible, want to take the words about Biblical judgments literally, while ignoring the time statements in which those events were to have taken place. Every futurist’s eschatology places Biblical catastrophic events in our present or our future. That is, most of the prophecies of the Bible, according to them, are for our modern times, They say this, while ignoring the original use of the time statements connected to what they teach.
For example, notice in 2Peter 3:1-2 that Peter tells his readers that he wishes to stir up their minds by reason of a reminder. Of what did Peter wish to remind this readers? Well, first of all Peter wanted to remind them of what he had already written to them in his first epistle (cf. 2Peter 3:1). What Peter’s first epistles does is provide an outline or a parameter into which his words in his second epistle (especially 2Peter 3) must fit. This alone provides great limitations upon Peter’s words. Therefore, folks today, who try to tells us that Peter was speaking about the end of time or the end of the universe, are going way beyond Peter’s intended meaning, and I hope to show this in this study. It is necessary that we limit our imaginations to the context of the words in scripture (cf. 2John 1:9). Therefore, I contend that Peter’s second epistle needs to be read within the time parameters of his first epistle. What were those time parameters?
Notice that, in 1Peter 1:5 Peter wrote that his readers (those mentioned in the five Roman provinces of 1Peter 1—to whom he also wrote in 2Peter 3:1) were kept by the power of God for the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (days). What time was salvation supposed to be revealed? It was “ready to be revealed”, although NOW “for a little while” they were undergoing persecution (1Peter:6). Therefore the last days or the last time of 1Peter 1:5 was in the NOW of 1Peter 1:6. However we interpret time statements in the scriptures will affect the manner in which we understand God’s word.
Next, notice that Peter tells us that the prophets of old have inquired and searched diligently to understand both the salvation they prophesied and what manner of time it would occur (1Peter 1:10). It was revealed to them that they didn’t write about their own generation, but to people in the first century. In other words, God told them, “This is not for you!”Time is a critical point concerning eschatology. However, many people today want to ignore the time references in the Bible.
It wasn’t until the first century AD that Christ was revealed, and we are told that he was manifested in “these last times” for you (Peter’s first century readers – 1Peter 1:20). Jesus lived and died in the “last times”. The last times are not our days, nor are they yet future for us. The last times was a period of time in the first century AD. It makes absolutely no sense to speak of his readers’ vindication in the days of their persecutors, if Peter wasn’t saying they were living in the last days (2Peter 2:12).
Not only so, but Peter said the “end of all things” was at hand (1Peter 4:7), and Christ stood ready to judge the living and the dead at that time, in that generation (1Peter 4:5). In other words, the coming or appearing of Christ was at hand back in the first century AD (1Peter 1:7, 13), and at Jesus’ appearing the resurrection and judgment of the living and the dead would occur (1Peter 4:5), and this would also be a time when his servants would be vindicated (1Peter 2:12), and all this was about to be revealed (1Peter 5:1).
These time statements must not, cannot, be ignored, though they are ignored by the eschatology of all futurist paradigms. Nevertheless, I intend to honor the time statements in the Bible as I go through Peter’s eschatological statements in 2Peter 3.[1]
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[1] This study is heavily based upon the arguments made by Dr. William Bell in his You Tube video: A Reminder.
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