2 Peter Chapter 3
2022 - Vs 1:
1 This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, [2Pe 3:1 ESV]
Yet another place where the writer (Peter?) is legitimizing this letter as authoritative. He is saying it is 2 of 2, so we know that the writer is well aware of the first letter, and is claiming authorship of both. As in, if you accept that letter, then you must also accept this second one. Why would he put that in like that? Or did someone later sort of slip that in? Well...usual arguments...he'd have had to slip it into every single extant copy of this one. That would be pretty difficult.
2021 - Just reading through the rest. Next time, focus on 3 and Jude.
Warnings of the last days coming, and the signs that it is near.
2022 - This verse:
2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, [2Pe 3:2 ESV]
An injunction to study the OT, to correlate current events with the predictions of the OT, and so continuously verify the truth - the divine inspiration - of the old scriptures. If we do that, then we not only accept what they say about prophecy as truth that could only have come from God but everything else they say as truth that came from God. We should believe what the OT prophets related about how we should behave, how we should live, about what is sin and what is not. We should use the OT Law - God's own Law - as a model for our own modern laws. This verse is about cementing into place the "breathed out" nature of the Bible. It must never fall. It must be ever defended.
Next, he makes the writings of the apostles equivalent with scripture. As the writings of Isaiah, so also the writings of Peter, John, James, and Paul. That is what is being claimed here. If I wanted to de-canonize this book, here is where I would say the forger had something to gain. Perhaps in some other book attributed to an apostle he has made a false claim - perhaps mentioned his own name as being a faithful servant of Paul or something like that, and he wants to go around showing it in the various churches and getting himself invited to speak, accept room and board, and perhaps remuneration for his time. This is quite an involved deception. First, a fake letter as from Peter saying all the other apostolic writings are as good as scripture, and then having his own real name in some other letter that he claims is from a different apostle endorsing his credentials. This is where I would attack this. I don't believe it because I don't believe anyone could write such an obviously inspired book unless they were guided by the Holy Spirit. Even if an imposter wrote this, the words, I believe, are from God, and so his deception was turned to God's own purpose.
Uniformitarianism is refuted here. With fact.
2022 - This verse:
4 They will say, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation." [2Pe 3:4 ESV]
In 68 AD or so, you have the concept of geological Uniformitarianism clearly stated. And clearly refuted. It can take you backwards only so far, only to the recession of the flood waters from the earth. Those changed everything in a heartbeat. Instead of being debris from some comet, why isn't the iridium line - or whatever it is that is seen worldwide at the same level - why isn't that the "Noah's Flood Line"?
This verse is a truly remarkable prediction, unlikely to have been made in an uninspired book.
2022 - And now this verse:
5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, [2Pe 3:5 ESV]
Does this say that the universe really is billions of years old, and that it sat there and ran on its own for a very long time, and then, at Genesis 1:1 God directly intervened in the conditions of planet Earth. Genesis is the story of what God did from there, not a history of all that has ever existed. Is the creation of light the "igniting" of Sol? As that fire heats up the earth, does the sky clear and other more distant and long since ignited stars become visible?
Hmm...is this just the gap theory? Well not really, because I think the earth stayed without form and void for all those billions of years. I don't think evolution happens in the gap. In fact, I still put a period after happens. But a lifeless, water-covered, dark planet could have sat there and rotated around the mass that was a pre-ignition star being formed for a very long time. And it would have been forever, but for God.
2025 - AND, this is an explanation of why there is no life on other planets. Because God DID NOT step in there to create life from the dust of that earth as he did from the dust of this one. Life requires supernatural intervention, and here it is in 2Pe.
2025 - Still one big problem though...how did all those fossils get down into those layers that had no life when they were laid down. All those limestones and shales. How do you get a fossil from an animal created inside the last 50K years into a shale that has been there for 50 million? But at the same time, ask this...If life has been here 50 million, why would it not be here a billion? What precluded life before the Cambrian?
I have never thought about this verse this way before. If this could hold up, and Uniformitarianism could hold up, you would have a pretty irrefutable case that 2 Peter BELONGS in the canon.
Possibly, these two verses could be made into a FB post. If not, surely these ideas belong on my website. The "Pre-Genesis Gap Theory", instead of the Genesis 1:1 to 1:2 gap. My version requires no evolution to work out.
2025 - This oft-quoted verse:
8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. [2Pe 3:8 ESV]. This verse is sometimes quoted to propose that creation spoken of as taking only six 24 hour days might in fact have been a much longer time, since time is meaningless to God. Each day, it is said using this verse, could have even been millions of years long. But look at the context of the verse! Peter offers this way of looking at time not as an explanation of creation - which he was talking about in 4-6, but adds it after vs 7 when he was talking about the coming destruction of ungodly men. For most of us, who have loved ones, friends, and relatives that are unsaved, this destruction represents the end of any chance that these people will be saved. This imminent destruction is in that sense a thing to be feared. So what does Peter say? He says yes, it might come tomorrow, but for God tomorrow might mean a thousand years, a million, so this final destruction should motivate us, but not scare us into silence. And he adds yet another thought...that God delays that destruction because, like us, HE ALSO wants those lost people to be saved! So the one or a thousand idea is, to my mind, not the least bit about resolving the old earth of modern evolutionary scientist with the creation story in Genesis 1-3. It is about keeping us from sitting around depressed about the end of the world coming soon and instead urging us to get out there and spread the gospel to any who will listen...and especially to those close to us.
I hang onto this verse in desperation for the lost ones that I love:
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. [2Pe 3:9 ESV]
Peter tells us that what Paul says can be hard to understand. The difficulty and complexity of his teaching are exploited by false teachers - ignorant and unstable - to lead people astray, to the destruction of the false teachers, and those who follow them. They do the same with "other Scriptures". Peter equates Paul's writing here with OT Scripture.
2022 - The idea here is that you cannot explain the doctrine of sanctification in five minutes. You cannot explain it with one verse. You cannot really explain it with just the New Testament or Just the Old. Paul puts it all together. If you just pick out one verse or just a few, then you can twist and turn what is there and make it seem like something else, and you can get away with presenting such "incomplete" doctrines to those who won't take the time to study it all the way out. That is what false teachers do. They extract a concept from the whole into which it belongs, and clip on irrelevant and unsubstantiated concepts around it's edges, where its true connections have been severed. False doctrine is a Frankenstein monster cobbled together by little men playing at godhood. Is that what she was really about when she wrote that book? I may actually need to read that book. What a novel idea! (2023 - I read that book last year. It was interesting, but this is not at all what it was about.)