2nd Peter 3 verse 8

Do not ignore this one fact beloved that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slow about his promise as some counts slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish,

but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise,

and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up.

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God,

because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire.

But according to his promise, we wait for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Therefore,

beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or

blemish and at peace, and count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation.

Now in order to understand these verses 10 through 14 of 2nd Peter 3. I think we need to keep in mind that still Peter has in view this

false teaching that we have been encountering week after week in these verses.

The false teaching you remember most recently came to expression in verse four of chapter three and there

they had their say and what they said was where is the promise of Christ's coming?

For ever since the fathers fell asleep,

all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.

In other words, the false teachers basically rejected the reality of the second coming.

Because, among other reasons, the traditional teaching that with the coming of the Lord there would be a kind of world transforming

upheaval is so unlikely.

It's just unbelievable, unimaginable that that should be the case because for thousands and

thousands of years the world has gone on just the way it did from the beginning, they said. Nature is steady and constant. And this thought of an in-breaking of the

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