GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
2 PETER 3:10
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will pass away with a roar, the elements will be burned up and destroyed, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
Peter has begun to warn about the approach of the Last Day, and in this sentence he presents several facts about the end. We will consider each point in order.
• The Day of the Lord will come like a thief. No one knows when the final day will come, and it is useless to try to do clever-seeming calculations to make any prediction about when it will be. In his state of humiliation, Jesus even said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). Therefore it follows that the only thing we can say about anyone who predicts the date of the End is that their prediction is wrong. Jesus’ main concern for us is not about the calendar, but about the state of our faith: “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come” (Mark 13:33).
• The obsession with a millennium (the “thousand years” of Revelation 20) is a misunderstanding of spiritual numbers, and in fact violates the rule about taking the Bible at its word (the literal is to be taken literally, and the figurative, figuratively), since the figurative number “thousand” is given in a vision, and yet many people are misled or even deceived into taking it as a literal number. Figuratively, one thousand is the superlative of completeness: it is the very fullest extent of God’s allotted time for the world. To this point, Professor Deutschlander preaches: “A lot of mischief has been done in church history by those who wanted to fix the date of Christ’s return. Think of the obsession with the subject up to and around the year 1000 (A.D.); people expected his return that year or very close to it. Thus, not much of permanence was built in Europe leading up to the year 1000. It wasn’t until after 1000, for example, that the great cathedrals were begun. People just didn’t want to start anything of importance that was just going to perish in a couple of years anyway” (Your Kingdom Come, p. 442).
• The heavens will pass away with a roar. There are three “heavens” in the Bible, to the thinking of all Bible writers from Moses to Peter and John. The first heaven is where the birds fly, that is the sky (Genesis 1:20). This is also where the rain comes from, “the floodgates of the heavens” (Genesis 8:2; 2 Samuel 21:10), the place where lightning happens (Job 37:3), and the place where God set his rainbow (Genesis 9:13). The second heaven is where the sun, moon and stars pass by, which we think of as outer space. “Look up at the heavens,” God told Abraham, “and count the stars” (Genesis 15:5). The third heaven is the place outside the created universe, and it is the place where God has his throne. “The One enthroned in heaven laughs” (Psalm 2:4). This is the place from which Satan fell (Luke 10:18) and where God’s angels come from and return to on their errands from the Lord (Luke 2:15). It will be our abode forever in bliss and joy (Philippians 3:14). Since we know that the third heaven cannot pass away, Peter must mean that the first two heavens will be what dissolve and vanish in a mighty roar.
• The elements will be burned up and destroyed. In Greek, the “elements” are called stoicheia (στοιχεῖα), and in this context this means the basic building blocks from which all matter is made. Some of the ancients believed these to be limited to earth, air, fire, and water (Hermas, Hv 3,13,3), but this view is not set forth in the Scriptures. Peter’s meaning comes closer to what we would consider to be “elements,” that is, the atoms and other minute materials that make up all things. Apart from man and angels, everything will be burned in the final fire: “All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine” (Isaiah 34:4).
• And the earth and its works will be burned up. This means that all of the great achievements of mankind will come to an end. When the day is over, children are told to put away their toys, take their bath and go to bed. So it will be at the end of all things. Our earthly toys will all vanish; whatever great thing we were working on will end. Even books– even Bibles, I suppose, for we will have the word in our hearts, “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Corinthians 3:3)– all of it will come to an end. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” said Jesus, “but my words will never pass away” (Mark 13:30). Cleansed and holy through Christ, we will leave our earthly toys behind, and enter into our eternal rest and joy with Jesus.
This also means that of all of our achievements, the only ones that amount to anything are those that brought souls to faith in Christ. For as the sign says that my dear mother-in-law, Barbara Meyer, has hanging in her house on the hill: “The only things we bring with us to heaven are our children.” When the end will come, your faith will be seen by Christ, who will also see the unbelief of many as we are sorted like good fish from bad (Matthew 13:48) or like sheep from goats (Matthew 25:32). Do not worry about when the end will come, but consider the condition of your soul, and the souls of your children. That condition is the only one that counts. As Kenny Rogers put it: “I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in” (Just Dropped In, 1967). Let them know who their Savior is, and we will all rejoice together forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Peter 3:10 what condition my condition was in