BUT DO NOT forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
10But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.
Original Meaning
PETER CONTINUES TO deal with the disturbance created by the appearance of “scoffers” within the church. These false teachers have poured scorn on the idea of a second coming of Christ and the judgment associated with it (vv. 3–4). In verses 5–7, Peter rebuked them directly: “They deliberately forget….” Now he turns to the faithful Christians: “But do not you forget this one thing, beloved ….”1
Peter uses the word “forget” to mark the two stages in his argument. In its first stage, he reminded the false teachers of an elementary point: The Old Testament reveals many occasions on which God intervened in his world in a direct and dramatic way. How foolish to think that God cannot judge and even destroy the world (v. 7) when he himself has created it (v. 5) and “destroyed” it once already (v. 6)! But Peter realizes that even faithful Christians have questions about the return of Christ. So in this paragraph he turns to them and makes two arguments: (1) We cannot interpret God’s timetable by our human reckoning of time (v. 8); and (2) we must understand God’s positive purpose in delaying the Parousia (v. 9). Peter concludes the paragraph (as he did vv. 5–7) by reiterating the truth of the return of Christ to judge (v. 10).
The false teachers, Peter makes clear, were guilty of a deliberate “forgetting.” They turned their backs on a truth that was self-evident and were therefore guilty of willful disobedience. But there is another kind of “forgetting” that is not so sinful. Even faithful Christians can fail to maintain a truly biblical worldview, inadvertently picking up ideas from the surrounding culture that do not square with God’s truth. They can also be disturbed by questions and issues raised by false teachers. Consequently, Peter realizes that the true saints also may require reassurance about Christ’s return to wrap up human history.
One of the points on which Peter’s audience needed reassurance was the issue of timing. Excited about the new faith they had embraced, often experiencing severe persecution, many early Christians looked eagerly for Christ to return and take them to glory. Jesus had warned his followers to be prepared for his coming, which could take place at any time (e.g., Matt. 24:36–25:30). Peter himself encouraged believers to recognize that “the end of all things is near” (1 Peter 4:7). It is easy to see how such an emphasis could lead to disappointment when Christ did not return as soon as some believers hoped. Was God unfaithful to his promise? Peter understands that some of his readers may be bothered by this question. Thus he makes two points in response to this problem of the apparent “delay” of the Parousia.
(1) Christians must realize that our perception of time is not the same as God’s: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (v. 8b). The words are an adaptation of Psalm 90:4: “For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” The point of this verse in Psalms is that God, being eternal, does not experience time as we do. What seems like long ages to us is a mere blip in time to him.
Many Jewish and early Christian interpreters used this verse to predict the course of world history. History, they thought, would imitate creation and last for seven “days,” the last of which—the Sabbath—would be the messianic age (“the day of the Lord”). Did not Psalm 90:4 prove that a “day” in the Lord’s reckoning lasted a thousand years? This line of argument helped lead to the doctrine of “chiliasm,” or what we would now call premillennialism—the teaching that Christ’s return would usher in a thousand-year period of earthly bliss (see Rev. 20:4–6).2
But all this is far from Peter’s intention.3 Peter does not say that God’s days equal a thousand years; he says that in God’s perspective, a day is “like” (hos) a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day. God views the passing of time from a different perspective than we do. We are impatient, getting disturbed and upset by even a short delay; God is patient, willing to let centuries and even millennia go by as he works out his purposes. Peter is not telling his readers that they are wrong to believe that Christ’s return is “imminent.” What he is telling them is that they are wrong to be impatient when it does not come as quickly as they might like or hope.
(2) Peter’s second response to the problem of the apparent delay in Christ’s coming has to do with God’s purpose in delaying the return. This argument comes at the end of verse 9. The beginning of verse 9 is a transition between the first argument (v. 8) and the second: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.” The “Lord” may be Christ, since the New Testament writers usually think of the Lord in the phrase the “day of the Lord” (v. 10) as Christ.4 But the “Lord” in verse 8, referring to Psalm 90:4, is, of course, Yahweh. Consequently, the “Lord” here in verse 9 is also probably God.5 “His promise” refers to the promise of Christ’s return in glory (see v. 4).
“Some,” Peter suggests, interpret what they think to be God’s “slowness” in fulfilling this promise to be an indication that the whole idea should be rejected.6 These “some” may be Christians who have been disturbed by the false teachers.7 Peter is then exhorting these believers not to fall into the heresy of the false teachers. But the word “some” has a polemical edge. It is more likely that Peter is thinking of the false teachers themselves.8 They view the delay in the fulfillment of God’s promise as a sign of God’s weakness or uninvolvement with history. God is not really concerned with what is happening here on earth, they may have argued, so that any idea of a real end of this world or of judgment is foolish. This being the case, people might as well do whatever they want, for no accounting for actions before a just God is to come.
Peter directly counters this heretical skepticism: Rather than being a sign of God’s lack of concern, his delay in sending Christ in judgment is a sign of his deep concern for human beings. For in God’s infinite patience, he is waiting for people to repent before it is too late. He does not want “anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
Peter’s main idea is clear enough, an idea echoed throughout the New Testament (e.g., Rom. 2:3–5; 1 Tim. 2:4; 1 Peter 3:20). But what is hotly debated are the implications of this teaching. If it is God’s will that “everyone” should repent, why is it that many do not? For Peter himself has made clear in this letter that there will be people on the day of judgment who will suffer eternal destruction because they have refused to embrace God’s salvation in Christ (e.g., 2:3–10; 3:6–7).
The answer to this problem depends on how one understands the biblical doctrine of election. By making election dependent on (foreseen) human faith, Arminians maintain that God genuinely and fully wills that all people come to repentance and faith. The reason that all people do not is because God gives people the freedom to decide either for or against him. Obviously Arminians have found in this verse very important support for their view that the only reason human beings fail to experience God’s salvation is because of their own choice.
For this reason, of course, this verse is troublesome to Calvinists, who believe that God has chosen only some people to be saved. Most Calvinists have explained the verse along the lines laid down by Calvin himself:
No mention is made here of the secret decree of God by which the wicked are doomed to their own ruin, but only of His loving-kindness as it is made known to us in the Gospel. There God stretches out His hand to all alike, but He only grasps (in such a way as to lead to Himself) whom He has chosen before the foundation of the world.9
In other words, we must distinguish two “wills” in God: his “desiderative” will (what God desires to happen) and his “effective” will. God desires and commands that all people repent, but he effectually makes it possible for only the elect to repent.
Whatever the merits of these two views (and the issue is far more complex than we have suggested), I wonder whether we have to choose between them. For, as Bauckham points out, what Peter says here is similar to a popular Jewish teaching according to which God withholds his judgment while he waits for his people to repent.10 In this verse, the statement about God wanting “everyone to come to repentance” is preceded and governed by the statement that “he [the Lord] is patient with you.” In other words, it is God’s patience toward the believers to whom Peter writes that is the main idea here. We should perhaps, then, qualify the “everyone” at the end of the verse in terms of this leading idea: God is patient with you, wanting everyone of you to repent before the end comes. False teachers have arisen in the Christian community. They have begun to infect others with their dangerous views. Rather than bringing judgment on them instantly, God withholds his wrath, patiently waiting for his people to repent and to get right with him again before it is too late.
With verse 10, Peter moves from argument to assertion.11 God may be delaying the Parousia for his own beneficent purposes, but “the day of Lord will come like a thief.” The “day of the Lord,” as we explained earlier (see the notes on 2:9), was a popular phrase of the Old Testament prophets, which indicated the time of God’s decisive and final intervention in history to judge his enemies and to save his own people. The rest of the verse suggests that the idea of judgment is dominant here, though verse 12 shows that Peter can also use the language about the “day” with a positive focus.
Peter’s addition of the phrase “like a thief” to his promise of the coming of the day of Lord is significant. Jesus (Matt. 24:43; Luke 12:39) and Paul (1 Thess. 5:2) also used the analogy of the coming of the thief to explain that the coming of the Lord would be unexpected. Peter clearly opposes those Christians who insisted that Christ had to return within a certain short period of time after his resurrection. But he by no means opposes the idea of imminence itself. For him, as for Jesus, Paul, and the rest of the New Testament writers, the time of Christ’s coming cannot be calculated. Like a thief, he can appear at any time.
As in verse 7, Peter here also portrays the coming of Christ with cosmic imagery: “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” Each of these clauses presents problems of translation and interpretation, with the difficulties increasing as we move through them.
The “heavens” (as in vv. 5, 7) denote that part of creation that is unseen—the spiritual realm. And, as in verse 7, Peter suggests that the day of the Lord will bring destruction to these heavens themselves. The problem in this clause is the word the NIV has translated “with a roar.” The word usually refers to a whistling or whizzing sound; it is used of the sound made by an arrow passing through the air. Hence the REB translates “with a great rushing sound”; TEV, “with a shrill noise.” But since fire is so prominent in this context, the word is best taken to refer to the “crackling roar” made by a huge fire.12 In this case, the NIV rendering is apt.
The second clause poses the difficulty of how to translate the Greek word stoicheia. The NIV takes a literal but ambiguous approach, rendering it simply “elements.” But what are these “elements”? We have three possibilities. (1) They may be the basic elements of the physical universe: according to most ancients, fire, water, air, and earth.13 (2) They may be the heavenly bodies: sun, moon, stars, planets (see TEV, “the heavenly bodies”).14 (3) They may be spiritual beings.
The last of these options is unlikely since the meaning “spiritual beings” for stoicheia is attested only in three hotly debated Pauline texts: Galatians 4:3; Colossians 2:8, 20. Nor does a reference to spiritual beings fit the context here in 2 Peter, which focuses on the physical universe. But either of the first two options fits this emphasis well; and either also fits well with Peter’s use of the same word in verse 12, where he predicts that “the elements will melt in the heat.” Richard Bauckham thinks the second should be preferred, since Peter seems to be picking up language from Old Testament passages that predict the eradication of the heavenly bodies in the time of the end. See, for instance, Isaiah 34:4:
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,
like shriveled figs from the fig tree.15
However, in verse 12, Peter mentions only the “heavens” and the “elements.” And this suggests that “elements” and the earth are closely related, favoring the first option. Although we cannot be sure, we think that “elements” refers to the basic building blocks of the earth. In verse 7, Peter announced that the totality of God’s creation—“heavens and earth”—were “reserved for fire.” Now he moves on one step further, claiming that the elements of the earth will actually be destroyed by fire.
The third clause in verse 10 presents the greatest difficulty, as the following representative translations suggest:
NIV: “the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (see also NRSV)
NASB: “the earth and its works will be burned up” (see also KJV; NJB)
TEV: “the earth with everything in it will vanish”
The main problem is the verb at the end of the verse. For one thing, the Greek text has several textual variants. That is, the many manuscripts that we use to construct our Greek text differ in the word that they have here. Editors of the Greek New Testament cannot therefore be absolutely certain about which word Peter himself actually wrote. The NASB and TEV renderings certainly make good sense—especially the NASB “burned up,” since Peter has been talking in this passage about the final destruction of the heavens and the earth by fire.16
But it is just for this reason that we should be a bit suspicious of this reading. For the scribes who transmitted our Greek New Testament often substituted easier words for ones that seemed more difficult. The editors of the Greek New Testament that most scholars use today have therefore decided that Peter probably wrote the word heurethesetai.17 A literal rendering of this word is “will be found,” and many scholars do not think Peter could possibly have written this because it makes no sense.18 But the word can have the connotation “be manifest,” and the passive form of the verb probably has the nuance here of “be manifest before God.” That is, the earth and “all its works” will be manifest, disclosed in their fullness to God, at the time of judgment. While we cannot be certain, this seems to be the best alternative.19
If we adopt this general translation, two possible interpretations remain to us. (1) Peter may be referring to the judgment of human beings, with their “works.” The Bible elsewhere speaks of God’s revealing and judging the “secrets” of human hearts (e.g., Rom. 2:16), and Peter’s language may be describing God’s searching assessment of the motives and thoughts of every person. They will all be “laid bare” before him.20 (2) Peter may be referring to the judgment of the physical earth, with all its works (e.g., buildings, etc.). The former has much to be said for it, but Peter’s language and the context support the latter. “Heavens” and “earth” refer to the physical universe throughout this passage (see also vv. 5 and 7). And the continuation of Peter’s thought in verse 11 also suggests that physical dissolution has been his point in verse 10.
Bridging Contexts
WE SHOULD NOT be surprised that Peter had to respond to a false view about the time of the return of Christ. The New Testament teaching on this matter is controversial and easily misunderstood. We will better be able to understand and apply Peter’s corrective on this issue if we have a grasp of the general New Testament teaching.
In the Doctrinal Statement of the Evangelical Free Church of America, which, as a teacher in the denomination’s seminary, I gladly affirm every year, is the statement that Christ’s coming is “imminent.” Well and good. But what does it mean to say that Christ’s return is “imminent”? Free Church historians and theologians themselves disagree about this. And the same controversy is duplicated in many other denominations, churches, and academic discussions. Many people use the word “imminent” to describe the timing of Christ’s return, but they mean different things by it.
We can begin by surveying the New Testament evidence. The belief that Christ’s return is imminent comes from the many texts that claim that the Parousia, or the Day of the Lord, is “near.” Some of the most important are:
Matthew 24:33: “When you see all these things, you know that it [or he] is near [engys], right at the door.” (cf. Mark 13:29)
Romans 13:11b: “Our salvation is nearer [engyteron] now than when we first believed.”
Philippians 4:5b: “The Lord is near [engys].”
James 5:8b: “The Lord’s coming is near [engiken].”
1 Peter 4:7: “The end of all things is near [engiken].”
Do these verses mean that the early Christians definitely expected Christ to return within a few years? Many scholars answer, “Yes.” They note three verses from the Gospels in which Jesus seems to make just such a prediction:
Matthew 10:23b: “ ‘I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.’ ”
Mark 9:1 (and par.): “ ‘I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.’ ”
Mark 13:30 (par. Matt. 24:34): “ ‘I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.’ ”
And Paul seemed to share this expectation as well. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, for instance, he wrote as if he would be alive when Christ returned in glory:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
Therefore, on the basis of Jesus’ teaching, the first generation of Christians believed that Christ would return very shortly. After some time, however, that expectation began to fade. Christ’s failure to return as soon as expected led some to throw out the idea of a Parousia altogether (e.g., the false teachers Peter is opposing). Other, orthodox Christians argued in response that Christ would certainly come but that he may be delayed for a long time (this would be Peter’s view here). Scholars who adopt this paradigm thus trace a development in the idea of imminence in the New Testament writings, from an enthusiastic certainty of a coming within a few years (Jesus, the “authentic” Paul) to a more “realistic” expectation of perhaps long delay (the Pastoral Letters; 2 Peter). For these scholars, “imminence” characterizes the first of these views and refers to the certainty of an immediate Parousia.
But we question the premise of this whole scenario—that Jesus or Paul predicted that the Parousia would take place within their generation. The verses we have cited above, commonly used to prove this, are better interpreted otherwise. The “coming of the Son of Man” in Matthew 10:23 may refer to the fall of Jerusalem; or Jesus may have expanded his vision here from the original Twelve to disciples generally. Mark 9:1 and parallels, as we argued in our interpretation of 1:16–18, refers to the Transfiguration. And “all these things” in Mark 13:30 (par. Matt. 24:34) probably does not include the Parousia itself (“these things” in the previous verse certainly does not). That Paul hoped to be among those alive when Christ returned is clear, but he never taught that this would necessarily be the case. Despite its widespread acceptance in the scholarly community, the idea that Christ would return within a few years of his death and resurrection does not have clear New Testament support.
What we find, on the contrary, are three related strands of teaching. Christ’s coming:
is “near” (see the texts above);
may be delayed (Luke 19:11–27; 2 Peter 3:8–9);
is temporally uncertain (Mark 13:32, 35 and par.; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10).
We can easily weave these three strands together into a single, coherent teaching. Not even Jesus himself knows the time of his return in glory (Mark 13:32). It has been set by God and revealed to no one. He may, for his own purposes, choose to delay or to speed up the timetable (see 2 Peter 3:12, below). Christians must always reckon with the possibility that it can take place at any time. Imminence, defined biblically, means that the return of Christ and the culmination of history are always impending. The Parousia is the next event in salvation history; it may be preceded by signs (Matt. 24:29; 2 Thess. 2:3–7), but the signs come so shortly before the end or are themselves so ambiguous that they give no help in “date-setting.” The Christian must always live in expectation that human history may suddenly come to an end.
Contemporary Significance
ONCE WE UNDERSTAND the New Testament idea of “imminence” as it applies to the Parousia, we can better appreciate what is going on in 2 Peter 3. Clearly the false teachers have assumed a radical and unbiblical interpretation of imminence, thinking that it required Christ to return shortly after his resurrection. Since he did not come when they expected, they rejected the idea altogether. Peter responds by reminding his readers that God’s timetable is not ours and that what we might think is an intolerable delay is a mere moment from God’s perspective. Peter is not, as scholars think, correcting an earlier, more radical, New Testament view of imminence; he is reasserting the biblical perspective against the misunderstanding of the false teachers.
If the view of imminence as I have outlined above and as Peter defends here is accurate, then an obvious point of contemporary significance is the error of “date-setting.” Date-setters have arisen throughout the history of the church. Claiming to have received a vision from God or to have solved the prophetic puzzle, these folks predict an exact date for the Rapture, the Parousia, or, more generally, the end of the world. We mentioned above those Christians who interpreted Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 to predict a thousand-year messianic age and who were therefore certain that Christ would return in A.D. 1000. The fervor caused by the Reformation sparked several other such movements. And in our own day we have lived through Edgar Whisenant’s 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, while the Korean church was deeply affected (and sadly disappointed) by similar predictions in the early 1990s.
We may be thankful that such self-appointed prophets remind us that Christ could return at any time. But we must deplore and reject their assumption to know what Christ himself did not know. Many sincere Christians have been led astray by these date-setters. Convinced that the end of history is just around the corner, Christians have sold property and houses, quit jobs, and generally dropped out of society. The failure of the predicted world’s end has meant for them not only spiritual uncertainty but economic disaster.
But we also meet this general approach in a much milder guise. Tim LaHaye, for instance, has written an article in which he clearly and repeatedly affirms the biblical truth that no one can know the day or the hour. But he also claims that “our generation has more legitimate reasons for believing [that Jesus will return in our generation] than any previous generation.”21 And, interestingly, one of his “twelve reasons” for thinking this is the ancient rabbinic tradition that interpreted the days of creation as outlining the course of world history, with each “day” a thousand years in length. According to LaHaye, this would make the year 2000 the approximate time for Christ’s return.22 True, LaHaye is cautious about all of this, and he plainly refuses to set dates. But he does suggest we can “set limits.” He repeatedly notes developments that make it possible—for the first time—for certain of the biblical prophecies about Christ’s return to be fulfilled. Implicitly, therefore, generations before ours could not view the Lord’s coming as imminent. But this flies in the face of the clear New Testament teaching to the contrary.
LaHaye’s article illustrates, it seems to me, one of the persistent problems in Christians’ attitude toward the return of Christ: the tendency to tie belief in imminence to certain signs. By doing so, they imply that Christ’s return can be imminent only if the signs—as they interpret them, of course—are in place. But this is not the New Testament perspective. It usually affirms the truth of imminence apart from signs. And where signs are mentioned, they are quite general. For instance, Jesus tells us that “when you see all these things, you know that it [or he] is near” (Matt. 24:33). In this context “all these things” include wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution, false christs, and prophets (vv. 4–25)—things that are present throughout the church age.
The danger in the view I am contesting is that Christians will adopt the appropriate eschatological mindset only in times of crisis. The Gulf War against Iraq in 1991 sparked renewed eschatological fervor among believers. And I guess that is a good thing. But how about the years when we are not facing such an obvious international crisis? What happens to our longing for Christ’s return then? We believe that Christ’s coming is “imminent” because the New Testament affirms it. We are called constantly to live in the light of the end of history, even if we can see no obvious signs of its end in the world around us. God can certainly use the world around us to wake us up and help us see the truth. But when all is said and done, we walk “by faith, not by sight.”