" Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."

 

One of the benefits of our nation is freedom of speech. The Baptists made sure people had the freedom to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, not because some ruler or government said you must believe this way. We believe that free faith is real faith. If someone makes you believe in a certain way, it isn't really yours. If you take Christ at His word and believe in your heart you will be saved. If you take the faith of the church, parents, preachers, or priests, but it is not your faith then it isn't real faith.

         

It is easy to also see why there is so much weird and twisting thinking about God. People believe what they want to believe in this world. People that mock God have very short memories as to the future, compared to the past. There was the rumor going around that Jesus was not coming again. Many Christians at the time were looking for His immediate return. There are indications in the New Testament that people expected it to happen within that first generation, only careful study shows that is not what Jesus said. Peter knows that he would not live and would die before Christ's coming, but he is already hearing the mockers say, "See Jesus hasn't come yet, therefore forget it.  He isn't coming" Anything within our society that smacks with supernatural or miraculous is discredited without reasonableness. Expect people to make fun of the faith.

   

This is an amazingly modern argument for rejecting the supernatural, bodily second coming. It simply says the laws of nature are constant and unchanging. The sun has come up and gone down; the seasons have followed each other; the tides have risen and fallen for thousands of years in perfect order; therefore, we must expect this constancy for the future  Any thought that the sky might be rolled up like a scroll and the earth purged with a global, fiery judgment by the returning Christ is unimaginable and unwarranted. This is exactly the position of much modern science and there are hundreds of pastors and theologians in churches and seminaries today who reject a physical second coming, and future judgment for the same reason.

   

We will know the motivation behind their scoffing which the Bible says will increase before the second coming. Knowing that the coming of the Lord is designed to judge the ungodly, they "scoff" to soothe their guilty conscience.

 

Remember that false teachers were guided by their own lusts and the good apostles were guided by the Lord's words. Peter goes back into world history to remind them that, in fact, the world is not as the false prophets proclaimed. They said, "God is not involved with the world. He does not intervene. The world is the same as it has been right from the beginning of time." Look at Peter's arguments.

         

He says in fact the world is not a stable universe. It was created by water and destroyed by water. God is not delayed by His standards, only by man's standards. He wrote to them that God judged the world once and will therefore do so again according to His promise. God does intervene with judgment and will do so when moral principles are violated.

  

What does he mean that the world was formed out of water and with water?  Apparently, he is talking about his thoughts from Genesis 1” Darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters." That was its beginning. verse. 6 "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." There was firmament. It was believed to be a mist like a cloud. Why did things grow when it didn't rain? Why was it that people could live to be 400, 500 years old?  One hypothesis is that before the flood this cloud kept people from direct sunlight so there was not the deterioration of bodies that the sun causes now. There was an atmosphere within the blanket of dew that hovered above allowing the moisture to make things grow without rain.  I'm not sure if that is true, but water was finally divided and separated from the dry land - out of it,  by it and among it, the earth was formed by the power of God.

  

 Peter goes on to show how it was also destroyed by water as well. Why? Because of the moral evil and sin of mankind violating Gods laws.  His anger and judgment were against the people who would ignore God's laws, living the way they wanted. Now the world is preserved for the wrath of God to be destroyed next by fire. It is the judgment for sin. 

 

Don't say that it was like this from the beginning and God wasn't involved. He was and is and He will be. We await Christ’s return. 

 

Dale