Another amazing chapter by Peter.
It first talks about their being scoffers in the last days that ridicule the coming of the Lord and then goes onto talk about the flood of Noah as God’s earlier judgement on the world.
Peter then goes onto talk about fire being reserved for the day of judgement and verse eight gives as a very important clue for prophecy. It says: one day with the Lord is as a thousand years.
Because this is written right in the middle of Peter’s writings of judgement by fire and the day of the Lord I am very confident that this verse is key to understanding God’s timeline.
Remember God made the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. So if we apply this concept of a day as a thousand years, we get a 6000 year duration of mans dominion on the earth and then 1000 years rest which correlates to Christ’s rule on the Earth for 1000 years talked about in Revelation.
Some will go back and count the age of the people in the Bible and add them up which will give you over 6200 years, but there is a key to getting the age correct around Israel’s bondage in Egypt and dating this correctly. If done correctly you will come up with an age of roughly 5890 to 5990 years, but their are other dating issues which are hard to discern. The Jewish people currently have their own calendar which gives this years date as the year 5776, but I’m not sure how they calculate this.
Peter then goes onto talk about the day of the Lord, which is fascinating as Peter’s description matches up perfectly with what we now know about nuclear fission. Peter says the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall loose with intense heat.
The elements talked about seem to be atoms of which everything consists. If you loose an atom you get a nuclear explosion which of course creates great heat and noise. Physicists don’t really understand what holds the nucleus of an atom together, they call it the strong force, but the Bible actually gives us the answer:
Colossians 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
So if Christ holds the atoms of the universe (which he created) together and he lets them go, we get nuclear fission. I always thought Peter was a fisherman, I didn’t know he was a nuclear scientist?
The letter then finishes by encouraging us to be steadfast until the end.