Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: From the Beginning | Part 3: The Flood | Part 4: The Sabbath | Part 5: Deliverance | Part 6: Isaiah | Part 7: Jeremiah | Part 8: Minor Prophets | Part 9: The Gospels | Part 10: Acts | Pauline Epistles 1 | Part 12: Pauline Epistles 2 | Part 13: Hebrews
The General Epistles encompass James through Jude; they’re called “general” epistles because they are not addressed to specific churches or individuals, as Paul’s epistles are. Two of these epistles are by Peter, and one of those contains the only substantial reference to Creation theology in this section of the Bible. That’s in 2 Peter 3.
Peter begins the chapter by reminding his readers to take heed of what earlier Scriptures have said is coming: “there shall come in the last days scoffers” (2P 3.3). And what are they scoffing? The idea that Jesus is coming back. They note that things are just proceeding, without supernatural manifestations, day after day, as they always have (2P 3.4).
There’s irony here, for Peter has them reference “creation,” meaning the beginning of history. Even today some who reject the biblical account of creation will use the term for the ancient past, even if they have in mind the “Big Bang” or the formation of our sun or our planet.
The irony, of course, is that there was a “creation,” and it was not the sudden, unexplained rapid expansion of a hypothetical singularity of all matter. It was not the unexplained accretion of rapidly expanding matter into a solar disk, or into a seething hot mass of molten material that eventually cooled into the third rock from the sun.
It was, as Peter notes (2P 3.5), a supernatural act by an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly aesthetic Being, who formed it all from nothing with merely a word—or a series of them.
Peter says that these scoffers are ignorant of all that (2P 3.5). But with a single word he crushes any possible self-defense from them. Their ignorance, he says, is willing.
Here he calls to our mind a passage in Paul that we’ve already noted: Romans 1.20. There Paul says that the truth is recognizable in the cosmos that we see all around us—but some suppress that obvious truth, they hold it down, because they simply do not want to acknowledge the obvious. In our day it seems that the primary external motive for doing this is peer pressure: the cost to a scientist’s professional standing for embracing creationism is significant. But as Paul goes on to tell us later in Romans, at root the motivation is not primarily external; it springs from each person’s heart:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God (Ro 3.11, alluding to Ps 14.2).
This is a point that Peter has already made in our passage (2P 3.3).
Having noted the irony in the scoffers’ reference to creation, Peter proceeds to cite another supernatural historical event: the Flood (2P 3.6). Since God has judged the entire planet once already, he can certainly do so again at the coming of Christ. Perhaps here (2P 3.7) Peter implies God’s promise never again to destroy the earth by a flood (Ge 8.21-22); he says “the heavens and the earth … are kept in store.” (In verse 22 he effectively anticipates the scoffers’ “evidence” in 2P 3.4.) But then he notes that the restriction on floods does leave at least one other option: fire.
Those who scoff at a return of Christ in fiery judgment (cf 2Th 1.6-10) are simply not paying attention to obvious evidences. Willfully.
And as to their allegation that much time has passed with no evidence of the supernatural (2P 3.4), Peter presents a basic fact about God that they are overlooking: the God who created time is not subject to it (2P 3.8). The passage of time means nothing concerning the validity of his words.
Some have interpreted this verse as a formula: 1000 years = 1 day. There’s a theory that as Creation took 6 days, with a 7th day of rest, so the story of earth will last 6000 years, followed by a 1000-year “rest,” the Millennium. That’s interesting, but I think that’s all we can say about it. Peter’s contextual point here is not about chopping history up into thousand-year segments, but something much broader: God is not bound by time as we are. If he waits hundreds of thousands of years before Jesus returns, that is no matter. The promise will be fulfilled.
Thus we should not ignore, or even worse, scoff at the idea of a future judgment. It’s coming; we should believe. And prepare.
The God who created the cosmos is able to evaluate, judge, and destroy it.
Creation matters.
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash