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@Dictionary
These guys in this video talking real sweet. The Dead Sea Scrolls? What condition were they in when they were found?
I hearing this man speak of reconstruction as well… but you know that the problem started before writing. Before a word of the OT was written it was oral for centuries. Remember that you spanning 2000 years up to 1 AD. So tell me what accuracy you speaking of when we know that stories when passed down orally change drastically.
Maybe the fact that the main stories remain intact is because of the predominance of the Egyptian religion and culture and the fact that it was copied.
Christ used the OT? Sufficiently that you could reconstruct the OT from what Christ said?
Give me a break. Those men are obviously ultra-biased in their approach. That video is a mere sales pitch for the bible. They give you all the answers you want to hear. They have worked it out so they come up with the right answers.
They are however misleading. There is no way that you can talk about one book of the bible and say, well this one is virtually word for word from two sources but don’t tell us about the condition of the others. One out of how many books? Then he does not say anything about what is omitted from the bible that is in the scrolls.
I like evidence. The Wikipedia has a few photos of parts of the scrolls on display. I invite readers to take a look at what that man in the video was talking so smoothly about and tell me that anybody can, with any accuracy give you a page of translation from a page for which you have only recovered one-tenth or less in some cases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_scrolls
Next thing, if you guys want me to respond or even to read what you write, you have to get to the point and not rambling into twenty and thirty different areas one time in long drawn out post. Stick to the facts and leave out the emotion and the quotes from the bible itself. Then we can both go easier with short post. At least, GP not dealing with the point so I don’t have to read him. He like Rediffusion in the background.
Technician
I havent got riled up yet.
Just doing some teaching and debunking some “what ever they are”.
Techie, do you think that your advice, e.g ” Live and let live man” should be given to every one.
I have today been enjoying listening over and over to that piece from Brahm’s Requiem, and wondering if I will ever again get to conduct a choir singing it again.
PPPS: Cf JPH here (briefer) andhere on dealing with the Egyptian pagan roots of Christianity claims trumpeted above by ROK.
Glenn Miller has a useful broader summary corrective to those caught up in pagan copycat myths on Christian origins — which are decisively and specifically hebraic [why the gospel was “foolishness tot he Greeks . . . !], following Frazer’s Golden Bough as 100 years’ distance. [NB: Nash’s The Gospel and the Greeks is a solid corrective for those wanting a book-length response to the whole genre.]
Let us see if ROK et al have a solid comeback on the merits . . .
MY THESIS: What is happening here is that a long since abandoned — because untenable — academic theme is being picked up at popular level and/or by academics who come from other fields and so are not current on the underlying outcome of the thesis, from decades ago. nor with the strong current consensus that Christianity’s roots are — surprise [not!] — strongly hebraic, thus creational- covenantal- redemptive monotheistic [which is precisely the opposite of pagan borrowing!] — and centre on the fulfillment of OT prophecies such as Isaiah 53 in Jesus of Nazareth.
Or as Don Howell explains in BibSac, V150, #599, Jul 93, p310:
At the turn of the 20th century a new approach to Paul was forged by the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, “the History of Religions School.” Spawned in Germany, this approach built on the Tübingen dichotomy between Palestinian and Hellenistic Christianity, and found the origins of the more developed Pauline Christology in the mystery religions and pagan cults of the Greek world. The mystery religions of Greece (Eleusian), Egypt (Isis and Osiris), Syria (Adonis), Asia Minor (Cybele), and Rome (Mithras) were researched and mined for parallels with Pauline theology. A dying-rising redeemer god, the exalted kurios, sacramental redemption, initiation into mystic participation in the deity, gnosis, and pneumatic experience were mystery-religion concepts claimed to have conditioned Paul’s thinking.
“Two pioneers in this field were Bousset and Reitzenstein. Bousset argued that the Jesus of the primitive Palestinian church was the eschatological Son of Man, largely derived from Daniel 7:13–14. But in the Greek-speaking Christian communities like Antioch, Jesus was transformed, under the influence of the Hellenistic mystery cults, into the acclaimed kurios. “Behind the personal piety of Paul and his theology there stands as a real power and a living reality the cultic veneration of the kurios in the community.” With consummate skill Bousset explored the Hermetic literature, Philo, Gnostic documents, and the cults of Isis, Osiris, and Orphis and discovered “parallels” with Paul’s Christ-mysticism (“in Christ”), doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Christ-Adam theology, cross and sacrament, and the dying-rising Redeemer. Reitzenstein, a philologist and authority on Eastern Gnosticism, researched the second-and third-century Hermetic literature and concluded that Gnostic terminology was the source of Paul’s Christology. Neill, in an extended survey of the History of Religions approach, credits the Harvard scholar Kirsopp Lake with popularizing in America the arguments of German scholars such as Bousset and Reitzenstein .
“The influence of the various religionsgeschichtliche models has greatly diminished in recent decades with the discovery of the Qumran scrolls and wider research in the Jewish materials of the intertestamental (Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha) and New Testament (rabbinical traditions) periods. It is no longer feasible to separate Hellenistic and Jewish influences into two hermetically sealed compartments. Paul’s Jewishness is in the process of being rediscovered. But a more fundamental issue is the entire logic of the comparative religionist methodology which presupposes the apostle to have been an inclusivistic, impressionable absorber of alien ideas rather than the proclaimer of a pure gospel of faith and repentance.
In short ROK has a very stiff row to how if he is to substantiate his claims.
@ John
“Doesn’t the book of the dead you have presented simply and eloquently show that early man was extremely conscious of sin and the need for forgiveness or justification from all sorts of different gods?”
Is that the scenario coming to you? Suppose you were living in a district surrounded by bullies and they all got you under manners?
If you can’t imagine that, think of slavery where you had to pay reverence to the slave master and his family and friends or otherwise you would be dealt with severely. Even walking the street you had to pay full respect to the white man or woman you did not know.
Imagine an old man being rebuked and ordered around by a little boy. o you really think that those negative confessions came about because of some natural fear? Of course not. They came about because somebody (god/s) was actually there laying down the law and enforcing it too.
This is not a figment of man’s imagination. God or the gods were here and it was not one. They all worked together and they had a leader that was the God of Gods.
I put it to you that if this was not real, that history would have been more savage; like the Nords, etc. It would have been the survival of the fittest; jungle life.
@Dictionary
I don’t have any stiff argument to defend. That is how you would want to put it? You would like to elevate your argument by degrading mine?
You check the link I put up? Degrade those photos of the dead sea scrolls.
ROK:
the very article on the DSS you link will tell you as it opens:
>>The Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.
The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 B.C. and preserve evidence of late Second Temple Judaism. >>
the scrolls are sufficiently preserved — tehr ewas indeed one textt hat disintegrated in the hands of the one who picked it up — that they give a powerful witness tot he fidelity of transmission of the Heb text across over 1,000 years. And, they join hands with the Septuagint translation in corroborating he condition of he OT in the era in which Jesus and the apostles.
That text is remarkably similar to the one you can go buy in a store, or for that matter download with Word or eSWORD for free.
In short, the empirical evidence strongly supports the trustworthiness of the OT text as we have it. And that brings us back to your evident problem of selective hyperskepticism.
FYI, the better assessment is that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary [ADEQUATE] evicence.”
And, by the reasonable standards of the field of classical studies [on which the roots of philosophy and history of our civlisation stand], the OT and much moreso the NT — which itself bears witness to the OT — are in very good standing indeed.
G’day
D
ROK:
FYI, The DSS have been collected and read long since, by the professionals. To deal with their fragility, as is common for such documents, they are kept under climate controlled conditions and are pinned between sheets of glass.
the styiff argument you have to defgend — as should be clear form your own prior assertiosn and my conrtexct of addressignhe pagan copycat thesis, is that he Judaeo-Christian faith traditions are rooted in classical paganism, and especially Egyptian paganism.
Since that was clear enough, it seems that you are putting up red herrings and strawmen, so distracting attention from being unable to address the challenges to the thesis you so confidently advanced, e.g. here and earlier here, also on Dec 27.
Meanwhile, of course the underlying theme for the thread is itself being by and large left behind due to repeated tangential issues . . .
Anyway, ROK, you have some pretty made strong claims about claimed Egyptian pagan ism roots of especially Christianity, but also judaism; and others and the undersigned have put up corrective information.
The ball is therefore now in your court to show that we are wrong.
G’day
D
@John
“To come up with 42 different deities he had to make atonement to indicates the high level of awareness he had of his sin and guilt and the mortal fear he had of death.”
I am warning you that the 42 negative confessions did not come out of the imagination of men to worship god. You trying to trivialise this thing, but all this is the basis of the very bible you worshipping now. This is where it came from.
What the christians did was to call the lesser gods angels. As I pointed out earlier, they were also referred to as the “Sons of God”… but when one appeared, it was as if god himself came.
So the movement to one god was to remove the intermediaries or lesser gods, hence this is why there were statements ascribed to christ such as, you can only get to the father through him.
We must understand that these are the same god of the Egyptians which are now being adopted by christianity thousands of years after the departure of the gods. These are the very same Isis Osiris stories, they are no different.
Another thing which we should also understand is that gods died and were immortalised after death. Same thing we do with our people, like how it is said that Marcus Garvey was next to the deity. Another very good example is Santa Claus. Next to that is Valentine, etc.
Onlookers:
1] pardon uncorrected typos.
2] It should be plain that ROK is simply making unsupported and distractive assertions.
3] In particular, it is indeed he consensus of scholarship that the Bible text is pretty reliable as to the originals.
4] further, the re is no good reason tenable in the world of current scholarship, to infer to pagan roots [Egyptian or otherwise] for the hebraic religion.
5] The Christian position is rooted in that Jewish faith, and it holds that Jesus of Nazareth is the prophesied messiah and redeemer.
6] There is no credible basis for assertions that Christianity is rooted in either Gnostic speculation, or paganism — Egyptian or otherwise.
7] the key authenticating argumentr for that faith is the resurrection of Jesus with 500+ witnesses, some 20+ of which we have identities for. And the Spirit poured out gives life ot the promises int eh Scriptures so that there are millions of witnesses to meeting God in the face of Jesus.
8] This gospel and the power behind it are things we know or SHOULD know, especially here in the Caribbean.
9] Further to all to these, “this same Jesus” who ascended is coming again, per promises. Coming in power and glory as Lord and Judge.
10] And in witness of that, there are predicted signs, many of which are being fulfilled around us — most prominent of which are those in Ezekiel 35 – 39 and Matt 24.
11] BTW, given our context, it is worth citing the first 14 verses of that last:
1Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2″Do you see all these things?” he asked. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” [70 AD . . . marking the end of temple judaism and the age of the church’s ascendancy]
3As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
4Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. [first key sign: deception] 5For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,[a]’ and will deceive many [In our region, we seem particularly prone to fall into idolatry of political messiahs]. 6You will hear of wars and rumors of wars [ME with Iran are capital examples], but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8All these are the beginning of birth pains.
9″Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death [because, first, we will be slandered into hateful caricatures,a s this very blog documents], and you will be hated by all nations because of me [Jesus is becoming a name hated not revered; as we look on] . 10At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other [sounds familiar?], 11and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13but he who stands firm to the end will be saved [the doctrine of the remnant who stand firm in an evil day, a major OT prophetic theme BTW] . 14And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. [THE sign of he end is that the gospel goes forth in the teeth of such conflict and brings in the great end times harvest as we see around us. Racing to a conclusion in our day . . . ]
+++++++++++
And, long since the unanswered taunt of God though his prophets to the pagans was: produce the long range predictive prophecies that show that you know and control the future.
D
PS: A nice short summary on Osiris, Horus and Jesus, by JPH. [Miller in total is 114 pp!]
@Dictionary
You keep talking about Egyptian paganism. Who were the Pagans and why are you ascribing that name to the Egyptians? The pagans were the people who came from Europe.
Are “lesser gods” angels?
H’mm:
>>rev 22: 22:1 Then1 the angel2 showed me the river of the water of life – water as clear as crystal – pouring out3 from the throne of God and of the Lamb, 22:2 flowing down the middle of the city’s4 main street.5 On each side6 of the river is the tree of life producing twelve kinds7 of fruit, yielding its fruit every month of the year.8 Its leaves are for the healing of the nations. 22:3 And there will no longer be any curse,9 and the throne of God and the Lamb will be in the city.10 His11 servants12 will worship13 him, 22:4 and they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 22:5 Night will be no more, and they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will shine on them, and they will reign forever and ever.
A Final Reminder
22:6 Then14 the angel15 said to me, “These words are reliable16 and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants17 what must happen soon.”
22:7 (Look! I am coming soon!
Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy expressed in this book.)18
22:8 I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things,19 and when I heard and saw them,20 I threw myself down21 to worship at the feet of the angel who was showing them to me. 22:9 But22 he said to me, “Do not do this!23 I am a fellow servant24 with you and with your brothers the prophets, and with those who obey25 the words of this book. Worship God!” >>
There ARE angels who are glad to accept worship: fallen angels, i.e devils or demons.
Historic, authentic, NT-based Christianity is clear on the matter: as the angel of Rev 22 says — WORSHIP GOD!
D
ROK:
Plainly, you have not understood the basic definition of paganism: idolatrous worship of many gods. (And the common g is important!)
Am HD — a basic online reference:
pa·gan (pgn)
n.
1. An adherent of a polytheistic religion in antiquity, especially when viewed in contrast to an adherent of a monotheistic religion.
2. A Neopagan.
It is beyond dispute that the classical Egyptians undertook idolatrous worship of many gods.
D
PS: The “matches” that those who try to rehabilitate paganism are inadvertently playing with:
1 Cor 10:18 Look at the people of Israel.12 Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? 10:19 Am I saying that idols or food sacrificed to them amount to anything? 10:20 No, I mean that what the pagans sacrifice13 is to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. 10:21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot take part in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 10:22 Or are we trying to provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we really stronger than he is?14
And thus, the sharp distinction between Christianity and paganism could not be plainer than in this primary source document dating to 55 AD, and written to former pagans:
1 Cor 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners,5 practicing homosexuals, [cf Rom 1:18 – 32 — I don’t know how anyone who seriously read this AD 57 prime source document could imagine Paul is a C1 neo-pagan synthesising Judaic ideas with pagnaism! — on the direct connexion made from idolatry to loss of control over and perversion of basic passions, thence sexual aberrations and general evil conduct] 6 6:10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive,7 and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God. 6:11 Some of you once lived this way.8 But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ9 and by the Spirit of our God.
heathen
1. (Spirituality, New Age, Astrology & Self-help / Alternative Belief Systems) a person who does not acknowledge the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam; pagan
2. an uncivilized or barbaric person
(Spirituality, New Age, Astrology & Self-help / Alternative Belief Systems)
hypocrite
a person who pretends to be what he is not
@Dictionary
So what is the point of the Isis, Osiris story? It is on the walls of the pyramids, so let the author go and scrape them off. All this intellectual dishonesty in the face of solid evidence that the bible is a plagiarism of the Egyptian religion.
one question though, if the Egyptian religion was all that bad, why is your god referring to himself as Lord of Lords and King of Kings; the names assigned to Horus? Let me give you the answer, the bible is a plagiarism of Egyptian religion.
@Dictionary
Plainly you have accepted the demonic usage of the word pagan. I choose not to because I know better. Christians have adopted this usage as a means of humiliating and stigmatising people. Never assume that I don’t know what you are doing. You people need to stop doing this foolishness.
Furthermore, this usage of words like idolaters and heathen was only a means of shifting political power away from the Egyptians and grasp it for yourselves. Yes you merely frilled the void after the fall of Egypt by cleverly manipulating the stories.
I have always said that Jesus, if he ever had walked this earth would have been the greatest politician of all times. However, it turns out that he is the greatest political gimmick of all times.
A DISCUSSION OF 2 PETER CHAPTER THREE by GP December 1999
Introductory remarks
The final words of the great Apostle Paul, I think, express the confident hope that every believer has when in 2 Timothy 4:7 and 8 he identified Christians as those who love His appearing.
True believers love the appearing of Jesus Christ, for that is our hope, our desire, and our ultimate goal and glory.
The Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our hope in that great glorious event becomes the greatest motivator for our joy, the greatest motivator for our service, and the greatest motivator for our holiness.
We live in anticipation of the coming of Jesus Christ, when He comes to gather His own to Himself, destroy the wicked, both men and demons, and set up His Kingdom and ultimately to bring in eternal righteousness. This series of events, is the goal and the purpose and the culmination of the Christian faith.
Because it is so crucial, and because our faith culminates in that, Satan works very diligently to deny the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and deny future judgment. Consequently, the church has always been plagued by false teachers who deny Christ’s return and deny judgment to come.
As Peter wrote this epistle, you’ll remember, he was writing it to help believers overcome false teachers and their false doctrine. As he comes to the third and last chapter in the brief letter, he comes to the climax of his discussion of false teachers, and that is his argument against their denial of the coming of Christ.
We’re not surprised that false teachers teach this since we have learned that it is the greatest motivator for our joy, our service and our holiness. We would assume that the enemy would attack this doctrine. And so we’re not surprised that these false teachers representing Satan do that, nor are we surprised that Peter wants to make a clear argument against them so that we can stand the onslaught of their false teaching in this regard.
The fact that people have been predicting the end of the world and the return of Christ for years, has been one of Satan’s ploys at distraction and a negative witness, especially when the date comes and goes with no return of Christ, because it gives the world an opportunity to mock all Christians.
Whereas we do not know exactly when Jesus will return, we do know that Jesus could come at any time. This means that we must try to always be ready for Him to come back, at any time.
When we look at the time statements in the Bible as to the coming of the Lord, we see that he said he would come — while some that were standing there were still living; in that generation; soon; quickly; at hand; he said his coming was near.
Everywhere that the Bible talks about the Lord’s coming it gives us a time statement. The NT saints fully expected the Lord to return in their lifetime. How could we possibly miss this?
Yet the majority of believers today, some two thousand years later are still saying that the Lord will return soon. Can the same event be imminent at two different periods of time separated by two thousand years? Someone said to me that they felt that the Lord said he was coming soon because he wanted every generation to be watching for Him. Think about that.
Some argue like this.
What that means is that when he told the first century believers that he was coming back soon, he really didn’t mean it, he was giving them false information to keep them looking for Him. Can you live with that? If that was the case what else did he tell them that wasn’t true? Do we have a God who intentionally deceives men? Isn’t it much easier to simply believe what Jesus said and believe that he came back in the first century?
If Jesus was mistaken or if he lied to us then what good is the rest of the Bible? There are those opponents who say that if you believe that Jesus came back in the first century then you don’t need to read your Bible any more. I don’t understand that argument, but if Jesus didn’t come back in the first century, when he said that he would then you might as well throw your Bible out because if it isn’t inspired, it isn’t any good.
All these questions and spurious teachings that are prevalent today are corrected by the Holy Spirit in this chapter. What is at stake here is the inspiration of Scripture. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and therefore without errors. Peter shows in this chapter that this is so as well.
In 2 Peter 2, the apostle warned us against the false teachers that would be found in the Christian circle. During the time of the apostles and after their passing, led by their instigator, the devil, these false teachers arose and have been speaking perverse things and bringing in destructive heresies (Acts 20: 29, 30; 2 Peter 1:14, 15; 2:. 1).
As a result, the mass of professing Christians fell into the worldliness, lawlessness and corruption that has marked Christendom throughout the ages.
Having warned us about the false teachers that would, and which are now prevalent in contemporary Christendom , Peter now warns us about the special evils that will mark the Christian profession “in the last days” (versc 3). He tells us that these last days will be marked by scoffers and materialism.
In 2 Peter 3 we are taught that men will assail all the truth of revelation, on the ground that creation has been always what it now appears.
This is mere materialism or man’s trust in what he can see, rather than trust in God’s Word, which assures us that the Lord Jesus will yet come back to this scene one day.
In the face of scoffers and the materialism which is on the rampage in our times, Peter’s message for us for our times is to prepare and fortify ourselves against such by remembering the word of God which we are supposed to have learned. [- “the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets” and “the commandment … of the Lord and Saviour” by the apostles. ]
He does not turn us to the church for guidance nor does he lead us to, look for any fresh revelation because the word of God is complete. Peter wants us to know that we have all we need in the word of God .
He wants us to know that the full revelation of the truth found therein, is adequate to exposes all that is false, and enables us to refute the errors of false teachers as well as the gross materialism of the scoffers of our day; and to stand against the “wiles of the devil” in our time.
He wants us to remember that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3: 15, 17).
Exegesis of 2 Peter 3:1-3
In verse 1 Peter returns to his exhortations to the believers, addressing them as beloved or “dear friends” by using the same affectionate title in 3:8, 14 and 17.
The use of the word “beloved” is typical of Peter as he identifies his pastoral heart, his pastoral concern for these people for whom he cares. It is a sharp contrast to the sternness which he employed concerning the heretical teachers in 2 Peter 2.
Although it is natural to take the first epistle which he refers to here as designating I Peter, they are some who opine that “1 Peter is not really a letter of reminder as he suggests here, and it is sent to a wide range of readers living in five different provinces of the Empire (see 1 Peter 1:1) while this letter seems addressed to a single church (or closely situated churches) whose people and circumstances Peter knows well.
For these reasons many take the first letter to be a letter written to the same readers but which is now lost to us. It would be similar to the reference Paul makes in 1 Cor. 5:9 to a previous letter which is also lost.
In both of Peter’s letters to this congregation he sought to awaken their pure minds, (i.e. sincere, uncluttered minds) to the dangers they face from the phony leaders in their midst who claim to be Christian. ’’
verse 2
Regardless to what one believes about which letter this was, there are no doubts about its purpose. which is ” I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.”
Peter says…Look, this letter and the first letter I wrote you have the same purpose, I want to stir up or awaken, or alert your sincere minds to the inevitable invasion of false doctrine and false teachers and satanic lies.
In order to do this, I have to remind you of some things you already know; things you have heard in the past. The little phrase “your sincere mind” tells us that Peter believed that his readership were genuine believers.
The word “mind” means understanding or thinking. And the word “sincere” means pure, uncontaminated, unmixed by the seductive influences of the world and the flesh.
Peter is thus saying…Look, you’re pure minded, because you’re genuine believers you have a pure faculty for spiritual discernment and I want to stir up that…that redeemed mind, that pure faculty for spiritual discernment.
This is off course in great contrast to the kind of mind that the false teachers have. The false teachers have a mind that is very, very different. They have a mind that is dark. They have a mind that is depraved. And they have a mind that wallows in sin as he pointed out in chapter 2.
But the mind of the believer has been purified. We have a pure mind, uncontaminated, unmixed by the seductive influences of the world and the flesh.
So he says…Look, I want to get into that pure mind, that new mind that Christ gave you at salvation and I want to stimulate that new mind and I want to stimulate the truth that you already know so that your sanctified reason and your spiritual discernment will be able to understand false doctrine and give a proper rebuttal to it.
When these false teachers come along and they attack the Second Coming– and they will –, I want to stir your sincere mind up so that you can meet that attack head on. And so he says I do this by way of reminder.
The apostle Peter says to the contemporary believer and church that he is “stirring up our sincere minds by way of reminder.” He wants to remind us that there are some things which are so important that we must not forget them.
Memories serve to give us perspective. And that’s what Peter wanted to do here. Occasionally, we do lose perspective. And that is so true in regard to the Second Coming. It’s so easy to think that Jesus may come, but probably will not come any time soon.
Peter says that we should remember what the Word of God says concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In it we find sufficient warning to keep us on our toes, watching and looking for His coming.
Peter makes it clear that the only way that his readers, whether past or present, could recognize the errors of the heretics of his day or ours, would be by comparing their teaching with the teaching of the holy prophets and apostles, i.e. the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
“This is always the test of error and the ground of confidence for believers. As Peter has already reminded them in 1:21 the holy prophets spoke words given to them by the Holy Spirit, which were, therefore, utterly reliable. The commandment of the apostles (lit., “your apostles” NKJV margin) probably refers to the new commandment which Jesus gave, that believers should love one another (John 13:34-35).
As the apostles developed that in their writings it is clear that such love was to be pure and clean, free from sexual wrongdoing (see e.g. 1 Tim. 1:5).”
A primary motivation for clean living was always the expectation of the return of Jesus to earth (see 1 John 3:2-3). But the unforeseen delay in that coming would soon produce scoffers who would mock the coming because they desired to live self-indulgent lives.
This suggests that the scoffers and the heretical teachers of chapter two are one and the same. The apostles had predicted such scoffing would occur (see 2 Tim. 3:1f, James 5:3, Jude 18), so that this denial of the parousia (“presence” of Christ) was itself a proof of its certainty.
The last days designates the present age (Heb. 1:2), and it has proved true through the centuries that scoffers have denied the second coming whenever hedonism and humanism have prevailed in the churches.” ( 2 )
verse 3
Having thrown us on the word of God to meet the errors of men, the apostle proceeds to introduce us to the scoffers who would be very vocal during the last days of Christendom.
He tells us that there will arise within the Christian profession or Christendom, a class of infidel scoffers.
He then tells us what they do – “walking after their own lusts”; then what they say “Where is the promise of His coming?” Finally, we are told the arguments they use.
The scoffers are said to be walking after their own lusts. It is always when people want to follow their own lusts that they scoff.
It way not be outward and gross lusts, but man wants to be independent to gratify himself, and therefore he must get rid off God, he must get rid of his authority;—he would be glad to get rid of God from of the scene altogether if he could.
Infidelity is associated with a low moral condition. Infidelity has its spring in lust, and these men are described as “walking after their own lusts”. The man that cannot believe what God says, does what God forbids. The text reveals that their argument follows three tracts, three forms.
Peter tells us in verse 3 that the scoffing false teachers will come in the last days using the argument from ridicule. He says that “In the last days mockers will come with their mocking.” Sarcasm, mocking, belittling, demeaning, designating the Second Coming and the judgment of Christ as anti-intellectual.
This is an emotional ploy. It is to be used on people who have been waiting and waiting and Jesus hasn’t come, and life is difficult, and they are discouraged and they are disappointed.
And so the false teaching mocker comes along and assaults their disappointment and their discouragement with the sarcastic mockery of…where is His coming? The argument from ridicule capitalizes on emotional disappointment.
Next, at the end of verse 3, he gives states that the scoffers also present an argument from morality. This means that the underlying and compelling argument in their false theology is that they really are following after their own lusts.
The reason the scoffers deny the Second Coming is not because they can disprove it scripturally, or have some profound insight into theology. The reason they deny the Second Coming and its associated judgment of Christ, is because they love their sin, want no ultimate accountability, and desire an eschatology that fits their immorality.
The return of Christ means judgment on sinners, and accountability as to how one lives their life. They don’t want that accountability or the associated judgment to come. So, since they love their lust, and want no judgment, they have developed and invented an eschatology that fits their immorality.
Exegesis of 2 Peter 3: 4-5
4
Then in verse 4, the scoffers present the argument from uniformity. This argument of the scoffers against the Second Coming is articulated thus:- Where is the promise of His coming?” Basically that’s an outright denial that He will return. Where is He? If we’re supposed to believe this doctrine of the Second Coming, then where is He? It’s a scoffing, mocking denial.
For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. Their argument is this, there will never be some great cataclysmic judgmental event at the end of history because that’s not how history works.
It works in absolutely consistent uniformity and immutable unchanging process. Everything just goes along the same all the time, there are no cataclysms, there are not massive earth-shaking events, there are no divine invasions, there are no supernatural judgments, everything in the world is a stable, closed, fixed system governed by never varying patterns and principles. Nothing catastrophic ever has happened, so nothing catastrophic ever will happen.
“This philosophy of uniformitarianism has gripped both the scientific world and the scholastic world for a long time. The basis of denying a supernatural reappearance of Jesus is that nothing of that nature has occurred in the past.
Several Christian and even secular documents of the first two centuries report the dismay that spread among Christians when the promise of Jesus about coming soon seemed unfulfilled. The fathers who fell asleep refer to the Old Testament patriarchs, as every other use of this term in the N.T. indicates.” ( 3)
The arguments of the scoffers have an emotional, moral, and intellectual basis which can be called revisionist history. Of course in expounding their theories they must reject the Bible, which they do. They have always done so, so we are not to be surprised that they are doing it now.
There are within the church as Paul and John predicted, Liberal theologians who deny the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and do so from within the church by basically denying the Bible, and by failing to teach it at all. They deny all that the scriptures teach about His return. Not only do they say these verses are untrue, they question that they are inspired by God, and suggest that these verses be demythologized.
YOU CAN SEE EVIDENCE ON THIS BU BLOG! Ah lie?
Having seen in verses 3&4 the scoffers argument against it, now let’s see the argument of the saints for the Second Coming
In verse 5, Peter rebuts the uniformitarian argument by recalling the very Old Testament event that would disprove their claims. The Flood was a supernatural event which came suddenly and unexpectedly upon the world, just as the parousia will come.
The scoffers of Noah’s day chose to reject the warnings which they received then for over a period of 120 years just as men today scoff at the warnings of the second coming which are sounded today.
Mankind also chooses to willfully ignore and overlook the fact of the second coming , just as many today choose to overlook the evidences for the Flood which still exist today.
They do not want to recognize that it is the word of God which sustains the earth and that it was by His word that God called the world into existence out of a watery waste (Gen. 1:2); that the land emerged from the water by means of that same word (Gen. 1:9); and that it was by water that the world of Noah’s day perished, at the same word of God (Gen. l7:23).
Having given the argument from scripture in verses 1& 2, Peter now proceeds to give the argument from history. Peter says, when the scoffers maintain the uniformitarian view that, “All things continue as they were from the beginning of creation, when the scoffers maintain the evolutional view that everything just keeps going along at the same pace, and that there are ( and have never been ) any cataclysmic, catastrophic invasions by God and no judgments, the Word of God says, “It escapes their notice” (NAS), or better “They shut their eyes to the facts.” Or “They are willingly ignorant of…”that the whole world was drowned,” is what he’s going to say eventually.
But before he says that, he says “That by the Word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water.” And then he says, “Through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.”
It is deliberate ignorance, deliberate forgetfulness, because the scoffers love their evil and their sin, and their lust. In addition they don’t desire truth or virtue. Consequently they don’t want a judgment and they don’t want Christ to return. Therefore they developed and invented a system that says He won’t, and that leads them to evolutionary uniformitarianism. But in doing so they must shut their eyes to two great historic, events that totally disprove evolution and uniformitarianism- these are the evidence for creation and the evidence concerning the judgement of the flood.
Exegesis of 2 Peter 3:6
The scoffers argument can, be refuted by evidence from
1] scientific or secular sources , from
2] logic and simple reasoning and off course
3] Biblical or sacred sources.
The evidence from scientific or secular sources.
2 Peter 3:6 clearly states “ By which the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” This verse states clearly that there was a judgment of this world in the past, and that the world that then existed perished due to a watery cataclysm.
According to McGee “The very interesting thing is that both the heavens and the earth bear scar marks of a past judgment. Since this is the subject of common knowledge today, it is only necessary to mention a few examples.
There is abundant geological and archaeological evidence to suggest that the antediluvian civilization was destroyed with a flood. The great shaft which was put down at the site of the ancient Ur of the Chaidees shows that there were several civilizations destroyed.
In the excavation, the archaeologists came to a great deal of sand and silt and quite a bit of sediment that was deposited there by a flood. Then beneath all this, they found that a very high civilization had
existed.
I personally believe that Peter referred directly to the flood of Noah’s day, and surely the earth bears abundant evidence of this flood.
We know today that the mountains, have been thrown up by some major catastrophe of the past. McGee recalls that on his first trip to Yosemite Valley, that the ranger there while giving his memorized lecture prepared by some geologist stated that sometime in the ages past there was a colossal glacier that moved down through that area, cutting out the mighty Yosemite Valley. Another evidence is found in the presence of seashells on mountain tops.” (4)
McGee recalls that he was once told by to a Christian oil geologist, in Texas that “It is quite evident that the entire state of Texas as well as the surrounding area was at one time under water.”
This was in response to McGee telling the geologist of his observation that down near a nearby river, that he had noted a strata of rock with nothing but dirt beneath it and nothing but dirt above it, and that on closer examination of that strata of rock, it was crushed seashells cemented together.
Geologists have found several similar sections of crushed seashells cemented together in the higher parts of Barbados, which contrast remarkedly from the normal coral stone formation of the island.
The ungodly geologists who have commented on this unusual feature however opine that this is evidence that the Carribbean archepelago was pushed up from the seas.
We are all familiar, with the account of the animals which have been found in Siberia in “deep freeze.” They have been there through the centuries.
Elephants, for instance, have been found with grass in their stomachs-green grass. They evidently were enjoying a tropical climate in that area when all of a sudden, through some major catastrophe, they were put in quick freeze.
In other words, the laws of nature as we know the interrupted; something interfered, the status quo was disturbed, and a mighty cataclysm came upon this earth.
In fact, “cataclysm” is the very word that Peter uses , and he says it was a judgment by water. At that time a great inundation took place which submerged the civilization of that day beneath watery waves.
In the world as we know it to day, three-fourths of its surface is water. It is one of the basic materials.
Even, the Greek philosophers from the very beginning always considered water one of the basic materials. Thales, an early Greek philosopher, speaks of four basic elements: water, fire, air and earth.
And we know that this water was the destructive force. In other words, there is resident in nature its own destructive force, and there was a judgment of God upon the world at that time by water.
Mc Gee further opines that ….The heavens, likewise, bear scar marks of a judgment of the past. I have been very much interested in reading a book by an astronomer concerning the dark nebuli.
He holds that these dark nebuli are evidently stellar systems like our Milky Way that are out yonder beyond our galaxy (these dark spots in the sky are not dark at all, for beyond them there are stars), but that these dark spots have been caused by some sort of a major catastrophe which took place in the past.”
There is therefore abundant scientific evidence to demonstrate that the world that was underwent some catastrophe.
Man’s Own discoveries refute the premise of the scoffers arguments that nothing has changed. In addition the sacred record in the Bible states that God judged the world that was. (5)
It is noteworthy that as archaeologists and historians study the world and ancient cultures, that it is common knowledge that it has been found that the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Egyptians all have creation stories that have a primeval ocean as the element out of which the universe originated.
So even those pagan countries somehow were influenced by the reality. And many of those people also had a flood, a universal massive flood in their traditional folklore.
When we look at the fossil records today and at the strata, it can all be explained by the unbelievable cataclysm of the Flood. It is catastrophe that has made our world what it is, not uniformity
Catastrophe, not uniformity explains fossil records, strata.
Gosh. I thought the pitch was tough going yesterday, but the ball moving too and bowlers in full swing.
Gotta be an Everton Weekes to handle this, so I gone.
Exegesis of 2 Peter 3:6 continued
The evidence from logic and simple reasoning.
The scoffers ridicule the notion of the return of Christ The root and origin of the scoffer’s argument is an idea, obviously placed in their minds by the devil or “god of this world”, to ensnare them.
Satan is the father of lies and lying propaganda, and this particular lie and modus operandi has proven to be one of his major and most successful weapons against man, and his desire to claim their allegiance and divert their souls to hell.
The scoffers argument itself was “Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”
The rationale of the scoffers argument is that the only thing that is durable and abiding is creation. It began far away in remote space; how it came we do not know exactly, but it came, and it goes on judging by appearances, they say that there is no change since the beginning. This is of course false. Although the eye of man may not have detected, or has refused to detect any change, but the Word of God assures us that there has been.
According to McGee, the scoffers “ want to adopt the doctrine of laissez faire, and they are willing to continue the status quo because they believe that everything has continued on an even tempo from the very beginning.
That may have sounded plausible and it may sound plausible to some now but surely it is not true to either the biblical record nor the scientific facts unearthed by both geologist and archaeologist of our times.
In 2 Peter 3: 6, Peter reminds us that there was a judgement of this world in the past when the world that then existed [the world that was] perished. ( 6)
“As for the promise of the coming of the Son of God, it is absurd. ” Where is the promise of his coming ? “they say scoffingly. But if they scoff at the Lord’s coming, they are obliged to let in creation, and if creation comes in there must be the Creator, and who is the Creator ? There they are silenced.
In scoffing about the promise of His coming”, they raise questions about an event which they realize will interfere with the gratification of their lusts.
They assert that it is manifest the Lord will not come to interfere in the affairs of men, “for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation”.
This argument is a gross piece of infidel materialism, known in these days as modernism. These men are not merely careless scoffers of the world; they are deliberate scoffers, who advance carefully thought-out arguments in the endeavour to prove that the warnings of the word of God are mere fables and traditions.
It is well to remember that the apostle, in the course of his Epistle, clearly shows that there is a future for the godly, the ungodly and the material creation.
In the first chapter he tells us that the godly are passing on to the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: in the second chapter he tells us that the ungodly are passing on to judgment and perdition; while in this third chapter he foretells that the material creation will end in dissolution.
All these great events await “the power and coming of our Lord” (1:16). Thus we can understand, on the one hand, why this great event has such a prominent place in Scripture, and, on the other hand, why this great truth is the special object of the enemy’s attack.
To none is the truth of the Lord’s coming so obnoxious as to those in the Christian profession who are walking after their own lusts. Such will seek to deny an event that they dread by arguing that it is contrary to all experience, and therefore unreasonable and impossible.” (7)
In the verses that follow, the apostle exposes the folly of the infidel arguments of these materialists. Having prepared us to meet these infidel objections by the word of God, Peter then falls back upon the word to expose their foolish reasoning.
In asking, “Where is the promise of His coming?” they admit that the promise of Christ’s coming exists. So oft repeated is this promise in the word that it would be folly to deny it is there.
Hating the truth of the promise, and not being able to deny its existence, they are driven to give up the word to get rid of the promise. They acknowledge it is there, but refuse to believe or accept what God says.
They go even further, for they deny that God has said it by calling in question the inspiration of the word. Turning from the word, they draw conclusions from the material creation.
They speak of “the beginning of the creation”, thus admitting there was a beginning, but, their wills being opposed to God, they seek to account for creation by natural causes.
The believer, however, knows that “by the word of God the heavens were of old” and that the earth emerged from the waters to become the habitation of man.
Next these scoffers say that all things continue as they were since the fathers fell asleep. Reasoning from what they see, they draw conclusions as to what will be. Turning from things seen, and taking its stand upon the word of God, faith knows that such arguments are utterly false.
So far from things continuing as they were from the beginning of creation, there have been striking interventions of God in judgment.
The flood is the outstanding witness of the intervention of God upon the ordinary course of nature. When the wickedness of men came to a head, and after they had refused to listen to His word preached through His servant, God intervened in the judgment of the flood by which the world that then was perished.
Accepting God’s account of the flood, faith knows with certainty that God can and has already intervened upon the ordinary course of nature, and that what God has done, He can and will do again in regard to the heavens and earth which now are.
“There are some of the wise men of this world who say that one must not believe in the flood. They say it is impossible, and that to believe that there ever was such a thing as the flood is a great mistake.
The reason that people do not want to admit that there was a flood is simply because once one admits to the flood, one admits the judgment of God upon wickedness, and if one admits the judgment of God upon wickedness once in the past, then it is very probable that he will judge the world a second time .
Men refuse to consider the coming judgement because it questions their will. Consequently they are wilfully ignorant of the solemn fact that that the world has once been judged.
Emerging as it did by the word of God from the waters, these same waters at His bidding swallowed it up and all on it, save those in the ark of his providing”
If God brought the world into being by His word, He can surely end it by His word. If God has intervened in judgment, He can do so again. Thus the apostle tells us, “the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men”.
To sum up the apostle’s statements, we learn:-
First, that by His word God created the heavens and the earth.
Secondly, by His word God intervened in a judgment that brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly, so that the world that then was perished.
Thirdly, by His word the present heavens and earth are reserved unto fire against the day of judgment of the ungodly men of the present generation.
In the light of the facts revealed by Scripture, we can understand that the unbelieving modernist denies the inspiration of Scripture in order to get rid of the witness of the flood and the promises of the coming of the Lord with its consequent divine intervention in the course of the world and judgment of the ungodly.
This silly attitude is like the ostrich putting his head in the sand. The tragedy is, however, that this is exactly the way that the materialistic and biased people of our day behave.
All kinds of plans are currently made for the called new millennium to be ushered in a few weeks time, but no thought has been given to being part of THE MILLENIUM ; even the church is not seizing this opportunity to teach about the millenium to urge believers and the ungodly to be prepared for the rapture so that they can soon reign with Christ as promised in Romans 8:17-18.
After all this event may just be seven years away!
Now read the religious threads on BU and see if what 2 Peter 3 is teaching is not very evident.
ROK:
On the claimed Egyptian paganism roots of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, you are simply reiterating assertions that have been rebutted on strong evidence.
I note you have not addressed any of that evidence and argument [which includes what is required to substantiate the claim you made of being the source].
That is telling. yes, tere are waoll painteings and documets form tombs in Eghypt, but here is no good evidence andf reason to see them as beign in any credible way antecedent tot he Christian or Jewish faith.
Here is a further summary on the conclusion of serious scholarship, from C.E. Arnold, in his article on Syncretism in the excellent Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Development. Ralph Martin and Peter Davids (eds.), IVP:1997 [which, pardon a personal note, sits in my personal library next to me [along with its companion volumes] as I write]:
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>> To what extent did the Hellenistic/Roman syncretism influence the development of early Christianity? H. Gunkel and other adherents of the History-of-Religions School argued that it was a major factor. Gunkel, in fact, concluded that, “Christianity is a syncretistic religion” (Gunkel, 95). He argued that the NT was strongly influenced by many foreign religions, but that these beliefs entered Christianity in the first instance through Judaism, which itself was very strongly syncretistic. R. Bultmann spoke of syncretism more often in connection with Hellenistic Christianity, which he sharply distinguished from Jewish Christianity. He noted, “on the whole, one could be tempted to term Hellenistic Christianity a syncretistic structure” (Bultmann, 1.164). For Bultmann the Jewish apocalyptic kerygma of Jesus was combined with the gnostic myth of redemption as Christianity spread to the Gentile world. Like Gunkel, however, he saw Hellenistic Judaism as “in the grip of syncretism” (Bultmann, 1.171) and therefore as the purveyor of these concepts to Christianity.
“The subsequent course of scholarship has effectively dismantled many of the conclusions drawn by the History-of-Religions School. Various studies have demonstrated that there was not one coherent gnostic redeemer myth nor was there a common mystery-religion theology [which covers of course the claimed Egyptian forms — and BTW, there are many specific fact claims about antecedents that are simply bunk . . . ]. We have already touched on the fact that Judaism was not the syncretistic religion that some scholars once thought that it was. Now most scholars are reluctant to assume that Gnosticism even existed during the genesis and early development of Christianity.
“The majority of scholars are reaffirming the essential Jewishness of the early Christian movement. The background of various Christian rites, ideas and terms is being illustrated out of the OT and Judaism, in contrast to the previous generation that pointed to gnostic texts and the mystery religions. The background of the Christian practice of baptism, for instance, is now seldom traced to the mystery initiation sacraments of Attis, Adonis or Osiris but to the OT initiation rite of circumcision and the Jewish water purification rituals.
“Gunkel, Bultmann and others clearly undervalued the formative influence of the OT and Judaism for early Christianity. Neither were they sufficiently open to the possibility that the NT writers could use religious language shared by adherents of other religions without adopting the full meaning of that language, as it was understood in other religious contexts. In other words, Christian writers could use the term mystery (e.g., Rev 10:7; Ign. Magn. 9.1; Diogn. 4.6) without implying that Christianity is a mystery religion like the cults of Cybele or Mithras. John could use the image of light (1 Jn 1:5, 7; 2:8, 9, 10) without dependence on a gnostic light-darkness dualism. Both of these terms have long histories of usage in the OT that provide us with the essential conceptual framework for understanding their NT usage. Yet at the same time they are terms that would communicate in a Gentile world, albeit now with a different set of connotations.
“There is also evidence that the apostles and leaders in the early Christian movement made explicit and earnest attempts to resist the syncretistic impulses of the age. For example, when Paul preached in Lystra (Acts 14:8–20), he was faced with an opportunity to make a syncretistic innovation to the gospel. Luke records that after Paul healed a crippled man the people of the city mistook him for Hermes (the messenger of Zeus) and Barnabas for Zeus. Rather than allowing any form of identification with their gods (even the identification of “the living God” with Zeus), Paul takes the bold step of telling them to “turn from these worthless things” to the one God, the Creator (Acts 14:15). Earliest Christianity appears to have made stringent effort to resist the larger cultural trend toward the identification of deities and directed people to the God of Israel, who had now revealed himself in the Lord Jesus Christ. >>
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[ . . . ]
Now, you have also tried to make overlaps with ANE wisdom literature do more than they properly can — there was a common pool of wisdom teachings that went across the region but was not specifically tied to any one deity or mythology. That is why the Queen of Sheba [On the Persian Gulf] could consult Solomon on wisdom matters.
And, when it comes to basic principles of morality, you need to consult the NT’s actual teaching on that subject:
Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people39 who suppress the truth by their40 unrighteousness,41 1:19 because what can be known about God is plain to them,42 because God has made it plain to them. 1:20 For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes – his eternal power and divine nature [which includes morality] – have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people43 are without excuse. 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts44 were darkened. 1:22 Although they claimed45 to be wise, they became fools 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings46 or birds or four-footed animals47 or reptiles . . . .
2:14 . . . whenever the Gentiles,26 who do not have the law, do by nature27 the things required by the law . . . 2:15 They29 show that the work of the law is written30 in their hearts, as their conscience bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or else defend31 them,32 2:16 on the day when God will judge33 the secrets of human hearts,34 according to my gospel35 through Christ Jesus.
In short, we should EXPECT core moral principles to be a commonplace across civilisations — as by and large they are. The problems are with making agenda serving exceptions, not with the principles of respect for others as one wishes to be respected, justice, etc.
Finally, here is just one sampler — one that happens to match with the Advent Season (and please, let us note the NT data suggest a Sept-Oct birthdate, not Dec 25, per the timing of courses of priests and the overlap in months given, as well as that shepherds in fields in Dec is just a little off the seasonal pattern: too cold! (It SNOWS in Israel, and not that rarely!) ] — on some to the tendentious claims being made on spurious parallels:
CLAIM on Horus: Was born of the virgin Isis-Meri in December 25th in a cave/manger with his birth being announced by a star in the East and attended by three wise men. The lit has confirmed what ]Glenn] Miller offers, and I have also seen the depiction he refers to below. I have found no reference to a cave/manger — Frazer [Fraz.AAO, 8] has Horus born in the swamps, and knows nothing about a star or Wise Men, of any number.
[JPH rebuttal:] …Horus was NOT born of a virgin at all. Indeed, one ancient Egyptian relief depicts this conception by showing his mother Isis in a falcon form, hovering over an erect phallus of a dead and prone Osiris in the Underworld (EOR, s.v. “Phallus”). And the Dec 25 issue is of no relevance to us–nowhere does the NT associate this date with Jesus’ birth at all.
Indeed, the description of the conception of Horus will show exactly the sexual elements that characterize pagan ‘miracle births’, as noted by the scholars earlier:
“But after she [i.e., Isis] had brought it [i.e. Osiris’ body] back to Egypt, Seth managed to get hold of Osiris’s body again and cut it up into fourteen parts, which she scattered all over Egypt. Then Isis went out to search for Osiris a second time and buried each part where she found it (hence the many tombs of Osiris tht exist in Egypt). The only part that she did not find was the god’s penis, for Seth had thrown it into the river, where it had been eaten by a fish; Isis therefore fashioned a substitute penis to put in its place. She had also had sexual intercourse with Osisis after his death, which resulted in the conception and birth of his posthumous son, Harpocrates, Horus-the-child. Osiris became king of the netherworld, and Horus proceeded to fight with Seth…” [CANE:2:1702; emphasis mine] [BTW, the Hebrew word ‘satan’ is not a ‘cognate’ of the name ‘seth’ by any means: “The root *STN is not evidenced in any of the cognate languages in texts that are prior to or contemporary with its occurrences in the Hebrew Bible” DDD, s.v. 1369f]
The one reference I have found to a birth of Horus has him born on the 31st day of the Egyptian month of Khoiak — the mythers have a one in 365 chance that this matches Dec. 25th!
In short – and as can be substantiated at dozens of page length if necessary — the popularisers of the egyptian paganism as antecedent to the gospel are making unsupported assertions that distort the relevant facts in hand.
ROK, you need to deal with the facts, not he assertions.
G’night
D
PS: And, remember just what you are mucking around with when you start to play footsie with pagan gods.
[And on this subject the real authority is Jesus of Nazareth; the risen Christ. he took demons very seriously and he has the resurrection from the dead with 500+ witnesses to prove that he know what he was talking about. ]
PPS: My recommendation is that you go find yourself a solid pastor who knows what he is dealing with, if you have been playing footsie with pagan gods. No joke!
That man…who is INTELLECTUALLY
*unable* HISTORICALLY *unable* and consequently, INCOHERENTLY *unable* to make any sense of the FACTS re Egyptian *Paganism* the worship of FALSE *gods* Satanic imposters, hence, his diatribe, that Judaism came from Egyptian *mythology* which IS the very OPPOSITE to the MONOTHEISTIC faith, throughout the Old Testament, emphatically CONFIRMED, by what Dictionary has given, which IS conclusive that what this *man* is saying, is nothing but NONSENSE, which he CANNOT refute in ANYWAY.
But, because he is unable to honestly, intellectually, logically, and coherently UNDERSTAND what evidence has been presented, he resorts to foolish *redherrings* Strawmen, in short, nothing but tripe!
He is not only WAY BEYOND the depth and scope of this subject matter, because he IS not equipped *intellectually* to grasp nor understand the TRUTH, vs the LIE, that he is so ignorantly propogating.
He IS blinded SPIRITUALLY!
Exegesis of 2 Peter #:6
The evidence from Biblical or sacred sources part 1.
If science and logic does not convince the scoffer, who believes in both of these modalities, then the Word of God which is sharper than any two edged sword ought to, if his hard is not hardened or his conscience seared.
With respect to the Biblical evidence for the second coming, in verse 2 Peter is telling believers that we need to review or rehearse or recollect the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets. I
n other words, we need to go and review the references in the Old Testament about the second coming. Peter is saying, “ When those scoffing jokers come along, go back and be refreshed in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit inspired Old Testament has much to say about final judgment.”
When those scoffing jokers come along, Peter admonishes us first of all, to go back and rehearse in our mind the Old Testament scriptures, which he designates as the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets. Peter is contrasting these prophets with the scoffing false prophets.
He tells us that the false are unholy and that the true are holy. In chapter 1 verse 20 he talks about the Old Testament. He says no prophecy of Scripture, that is the Old Testament, is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
So you go back and you read those holy prophets, moved by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word of God because if you go back and read that, you’re going to read about judgment. If you go back into the Old Testament and read the words spoken beforehand, long ago by the holy prophets, you will read about divine coming judgment.
Below are a few quotations :-
Psalm 50 verse 1, “The Mighty One…God the Lord…has spoken and summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting, out of Zion the perfections of beauty God has shown forth. May our God come and not keep silence, fire devours before Him. It is very tempestuous around Him. He summons the heavens above and the earth to judge.”
Isaiah chapter 13 verse 10 reads , “The stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light, the sun will be dark when it rises, the moon will not shed its light, then I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I shall make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken from its place at the fury of the Lord of hosts in the day of His burning anger.”
Isaiah chapter 24 beginning in verse 19, we read “The earth is broken asunder, the earth is split through, the earth is shaken violently, the earth reels to and fro like a drunkard, it totters like a shack, its transgression is heavy upon it, and it will fall, never to rise again. So it will happen in that day that the Lord will punish the host of heaven on high and the kings of the earth on earth. They will be gathered together like prisoners in the dungeon and will be confined in prison. And after many days they will be punished. Then the moon will be abashed and the sun ashamed, for the Lord of hosts will reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and His glory will be before His elders.” Judgment.
And you can go on. Isaiah 30, Isaiah 34, Isaiah 51, Isaiah 64, Isaiah 66, Daniel chapter 7.
Micah 1:4, “The mountains will melt under Him, the valleys will be split like wax before the fire, like water poured down a steep place.”
Malachi chapter 4 says…”For behold the day is coming… burning like a furnace and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be like chaff and the day that is coming will set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s inevitable…so says the Old Testament.
When scoffers come along, in order to argue for the Second Coming, and in order to argue for the judgment of God at the end, we must go first of all to the Scripture and first of all in the Scripture to the Old Testament. That’s Peters advice, with which we must concur.
Peter also advises us in time of apostasy, to also read the New Testament Scriptures, for he tells us to also remember the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by the apostles. That’s the New Testament. What is the New Testament? It is the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken through the apostles who wrote the New Testament.
Speaking of Christ’s chosen, plus Paul, those who wrote the New Testament, Peter says study the apostles who wrote the commandments of Christ, which means the New Testament when scoffers come along—there we will find the truth.
Exegesis of 2 Peter #:6
The evidence from Biblical or sacred sources part 2 .
Since we wont here quote all that the New Testament says about the Second Coming and judgment, we beg leave to give this information. “
There are 27 books in the New Testament, 23 of the 27 refer to the Lord’s return explicitly, 23 out of the 27. Three of the other four are only one chapter long, Philemon, 2 John and 3 John. And the fourth one that doesn’t explicitly speak of the Second Coming is Galatians which implies the Second Coming, very clearly
Galatians 1:4 says that Christ gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us out of this present evil age. That implies the Rapture and our deliverance. And in chapter 5 verse 5 it says, “We’re waiting for the hope of righteousness,” which, of course, is the coming of Christ and our eternal glory.
There are 260 chapters in the New Testament, in which there are 300 references to the Second Coming. The New Testament is replete with warnings about judgment, information about the Lord coming to gather His own, teaching about the fact that He will judge the wicked, establish His Kingdom and bring in eternal righteousness.
Peter marvelously in this second verse pulls the Old Testament and the New Testament together as Scripture. And his first argument is the argument from Scripture, bearing witness to the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So while the scoffers may mock, Peter says go to the Old Testament, go to the New Testament, it’s everywhere. And if you study the Scripture you find everything you need to know.
It tells us that He will come in the clouds, He will come in the glory of His Father, He will come in His own glory, He will come in flaming fire, He will come with power and great glory, He will come as He went, He will come with a shout, He will come accompanied by angels, He will come with His saints, He will come suddenly, He will come unexpectedly, He will come as a thief, He will come as lightning, the heavens and earth will be dissolved and on and on it goes.
It says the purpose of His coming is to complete the salvation of the saints, to be glorified in the saints, to be admired in the saints, to bring delight to hidden things of darkness, to judge, to reign, to destroy.” (9) This is certainly a mighty argument for the fact of the second coming, when the scoffers come along.
What is obvious, is that individual believers and the contemporary church have failed to read the Bible, or heeded the advice of verse 2 of this chapter, consequently, we are unable to effectively obey his advice of 1 Peter 3:15.
Then in verse 5 &6 Peter says with respect to the creation, the scoffers willingly shut their eyes to the fact that by the Word of God, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water.
What he is saying is since God stepped into the world by creation, that it is untrue to say that everything has gone along the same way.
By the Word of God, the creating, controlling, sovereign, preserving, power of God creation came. Now this, of course, is diametrically opposed to the false teachers, who don’t want a God who is going to judge their sin and so forget willingly that the heavens existed long ago; and that these heavens did not exist by evolution, but by the Word of God, who spoke them into existence. They were created by God.
Then after God had created the heavens, He created the earth, and this is how He created it, “The earth was formed out of water and by water.” The earth was some kind of a watery chaos at first.
Now to understand this better, we need to look at Genesis 1, where it says , “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
This corroborates Peter’s view. Genesis verse 1 says what God did, verse 2 says how He did it. Verse 2 says, “And the earth as God began to create it, was at first tohu and bohu,” two Hebrew words, formless and empty, a sort of chaotic mass, made of water, which as we know has no shape or any form.
Water takes the shape of whatever you put it in. Verse 2 says there was this formless, shapeless mass of water existing in darkness. When we study carefully the six days of creation, the first three have to do with giving the form and the second three have primarily to do with filling up the emptiness.
For the better part of the first three days He gives the form, and then He starts to create the creatures starting at the end of day three and moving to day six that fill up the void. So it starts out as formless.
We are told also in verse 2, “And darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” The word surface suggests that God has pulled the watery mass, into the shape of a sphere.
You have in verse 2 the creation of gravity which pulls the molecules together, holds it in shape by creating gravity, it’s in the shape of a sphere. He made the water molecules cling together, and that’s what gravity does, it make those water molecules cling together. And so this mass of water became a sphere.
This view is corroborated by Proverbs 8:27, where we read that God says He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep. It was formerly a formless mass in which God made a circle and by using gravity, specially designed, made that circle into the shape of a sphere…the circle of the earth. So you have gravity, you have shape to the watery mass in verse 2.
Then in verse 3, God said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” and all of a sudden there existed light. There weren’t any bodies, there weren’t any stars, there wasn’t any sun, there wasn’t any moon, there was just light. And all of the spectrum, all of the rays that go across the whole spectrum of light were created. All the waves and rays and everything that makes up light.
God in his wisdom made LIGHT first. And then He turned to the earth in verse 6, “And God said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
God says I want to take some of the waters in this watery mass and I want to pull them up here and I want to leave some of them down here in this sphere, and I want to create an expanse in between the two.
So you had the watery mass and then you had an expanse of space, and then you had water like a canopy surrounding it. A canopy around the earth. This describes the heavens that were long ago.
God created them by speaking them into existence. So now what He’s got is the heavens that were long ago had light in them, there was a canopy of water above, there was an expanse of space in the middle and then there was a watery mass with a surface that held together was a sphere. God called the expanse heaven, verse 8.
Exegesis of 2 Peter #:6
The evidence from Biblical or sacred sources part 3.
Genesis 1Verse 9, “Then God said, `Let the waters below the heavens,’” that is the watery mass that’s existing in a spherical shape, be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear.”
And dry land is injected into the watery mass and all of a sudden it starts to rise up everywhere and the water gets collected into rivers and lakes and seas. And the earth begins to take shape.
The lower waters were collected as God spoke land into existence. Thus it was that God took the tohu and bohu, if you please, and gave it shape, pulled some of the water up, surrounded the whole globe with a canopy. Left an expanse of space in between the canopy and the surface.
Into the surface of this watery mass He injected land, moved it into different kinds of altitudes and caused the waters to rush into the great valleys and separated the sea from the land. And God said that his handiwork was good ( verse 10) It was better than good, for God is the master of understatement.
It was better than good. It was perfect, an absolutely perfect place for man to live. He had a canopy shelter all around the earth which completely blocked the sun’s ultra-violet rays totally, perfect environment, perfect. And man lived in that world of long ago.
Because there was no direct sunlight and because the canopy covered the earth, and there was no rain but a mist that watered the ground, it says about the Garden of Eden.
The waters in this marvelous canopy filtered all the ultra-violet damaging rays of the sun and beautifully watered the earth with dew, a perfect environment and people lived 900 plus years as an average.
Then after this perfect environment which had been created by God, not by uniformitarian evolution, but by direct act of creation in three days and then the next three He populated it all, He filled up the void, the bohu, the emptiness with plants and animals and fish and man.
But even in that perfect environment man fell into sin and God looked at the world soon after in Genesis 6:5 and saw that wickedness of man was great on the earth and every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and He was sorry that He made the whole thing. And He said I’m going to destroy it. And God use the same thing that He created it from to destroy it, that is WATER.
And so, says Peter, “Not only by the Word of God did the heavens exist long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water,” but “through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.”
God destroyed the world with the water that surrounded it. God had built into His creation the tool of its destruction.( BECAUSE OF HIS PRESCIENCE)
It is noteworthy that Peter says, “Through which the WORLD was destroyed.” He doesn’t say the EARTH, he’s not talking about the physical world, he’s talking about the world order, because the earth itself did not go out of existence.
But the order of the earth, that is a canopy above, the water separated below, the heavens in the middle, long life, all of the dew that waters the ground, the tremendous ability of the earth like a greenhouse to grow everything and to grow it large and so forth.
And by the way, that’s where the dinosaurs came from. They came from the pre- flood era and they flourished and grew. That old order, that old canopy order, that old system of life was apollumi, Greek, it was ruined. It was flooded by water.
The word “flooded,” is katakluzo, from which we get our English word cataclysm. It means to surge over completely, or to inundate. This basically is what God did as described in Genesis 7:11ff, which reads :- “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life in the second month on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the flood gates of the sky were opened.”
The canopy broke up and the earth, the springs and the fountains and the sources of water burst and water came roaring out of the center of the earth.
And water came torrentially falling from the sky. Verse 22 of Genesis 7 tells us of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life died. He blotted out every living thing on the face of the land or the earth.
It was a worldwide flood because it was a canopy that surrounded the whole globe. Chapter 8 verse 2, “The fountains of the deep, the flood gates of the sky at the end were closed when it ended.”
God used the water below, bursting forth, overrunning its banks, God sent the water from above crashing down upon the earth. Water came from everywhere. And this was judgment. The whole world was destroyed.
Exegesis of 2 Peter #:6
The evidence from Biblical or sacred sources part 4.
Peter is saying to the scoffers “Don’t say all things continue as they have from the very beginning, because they haven’t.
We’re not into uniformitarian evolution. God created all this in days, and then God in a moment in time destroyed the whole heavens and earth that was.
We now live, my friend, in the second heaven and earth. It’s a different system. Nobody lives to be 900 plus or anywhere near that. All we get these days is an average of 70 years – three score and ten, the Bible says. Thus it is that Peter seeks to prove the scoffers to be incorrect.
Thus he convinces the believer that false teachers refused to face the true history, and have instead become revisionists historians. They make up their own history without divine intervention so they can live like they want to live.
Things have not continued as they were. There was devastating total judgment on the whole world and there will be another in the future, whether they like it or believe it or not.
The false teachers and the uniformitarians willingly ignore the flood, and they scoff at the second coming, but this will not change either the facts of the past or the events of the future.
Peter set out in this chapter to, and has successfully reminded us of what has already been said. The NT does not contain brand new prophecies that just dropped out of the sky containing new information.
2 Peter 3 is just a reiteration of what has already been written by the prophets that spoke before. Peter gives us a key to interpretation.
That key is that what he is saying has been written by the OT prophets. We must keep this in mind despite those who will tell us of the new revelations which they are recieving .
To sum up the apostle’s statements, we learn:-
First, that by His word God created the heavens and the earth.
Secondly, by His word God intervened in a judgment that brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly, so that the world that then was perished.
The conclusion of Peter’s argument, by the way, is in verse 10, “But the day of the Lord will come,” and you can stop at that point. That’s the summation.
It’s going to happen. You may ridicule it. You may not want it because you want no accountability and you want to live in lust and immorality and sexual freedom. And you may believe in the uniformitarian doctrine of history that says everything continues exactly as it always has.
But it’s going to come no matter what you believe, no matter what you want and no matter how you ridicule it.
It is reasonable for anyone to ask the question which naturally arises from the foregoing. When did this judgment which produced the flood take place on the earth?
Verses 5 and 6 of 2 Peter 3 clearly state that it did happen in these words:- For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: by which the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.
Although it is impossible for us to date the great catastrophe when the world was destroyed by water. There are, however, two possibilities. Several of the most outstanding Bible teachers and Bible scholars agree that it is the flood of Noah’s day to which Peter refers, and surely that seems to be the suggestion of vv5-6. I personally believe that Peter referred directly to the flood of Noah’s day, and surely the earth bears abundant evidence of this flood.
Exegesis of 2 Peter #:6
The evidence from Biblical or sacred sources part 5.
There was, however, another judgment concerning which we know very little. This judgment took place in the pre-Adamic world. It is suggested in the very first few verses of the Bible.
In Genesis 1: 1-2 , where we read that God created the heavens and the earth. Then we read that the earth was without form, and void or better still, “It became without form,
and void.” The literal translation is that it became tohu-wa-bohu.
In Isaiah 45:18 the prophet says that God did not create this world tohu-wa-bohu which would suggest that something happened that made this world without form and void. In other words, a cataclysm came upon this earth.
When God began to move in (the six days mentioned in the book of Genesis are six days of reconstruction and re-creation rather than creation), water was upon the face of this earth.
One of the first things that God had to do was to remove the water from the land and to separate the land from the water. So, you see, there was a great judgment that took place in this pre-Adamic civilization. We know practically nothing about it although it seems that this judgment is in connection with the fall of Satan who was created Lucifer, “the son of the morning,” an “angel of light,” evidently the very highest creature that God ever created. And we find this mentioned in Isaiah 14:12-14:
How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.
We have here what was evidently the origin of sin. Sin, here at the very beginning, is connected with the fall of Lucifer. This one, created so high, lifted his will against the will of God. In other words, there was rebellion in heaven against God.
And, my friends, this is sin at its very core. I suppose the worst thing that can be said about any man is that which is recorded in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah where it is said that each one has turned to “his own way.” T
hat is, we set our way over against the way of God. That is sin in its inception; that is sin at its blackest; that is sin in its origin. The way all sins begin is by man setting his will over against the will of God. And here we find this creature, the highest creature that God ever created, setting his will over against the will of God. He did not say he would be unlike God, that he wanted to be different from God. He said, “I want to be like God.” And he tried to lift himself up and set himself up as God, and set his will over against the will of God.
And that is what rebellious man is doing today. He is setting himself up as his own little god or insisting on his own particular viewpoint of God. Each one is to his own way. This judgment in II Peter could refer to this pre-Adamic civilization in which Satan, who evidently at that time was Lucifer, an angel of light, had control. When he rebelled and set his will over against God, then the judgment of God came upon this earth. And it was a water judgment.
The message of verses 2 Peter 3: 1-6 to our current age is that God has judged sin in the past and he will judge it in the future.
“This earth bears open wounds that testify that God has moved in mighty judgement against that which has opposed him and since he has judged sin in the past he is going to judge sin in the future’’ (10)
We live in a world that is heading for judgement .This is in keeping with his nature to be consistent ( Hebrews 13: 8 & 6:17-19.)
We know that our current world will not be judged by water again because since God has kept his promise of the rainbow of Genesis 9 for so many centuries, there is no need to suppose that he will not continue to do so again.
This in keeping with his nature to be consistent as mentioned above. Everytime we see the rainbow of God’s grace and patience hang in the sky we should remember that God always keeps his promises.
Every time we read a scientific article in a popular magazine about prehistoric creatures who existed upon this earth many many years ago, God is speaking to your heart to inform you that a judgement came upon that civilization because it had disobeyed and rejected the precepts of God just as they do today.
God speaks to the diversity of men and women today in many ways. Snow storms, floods, droughts, dust storms, economic depressions, hurricanes, the wave of violence are all ways in which God is warning the current materialistic age that seems so dull of hearing and filled with scoffers.
In effect he is saying to us, “ Don’t you see that you should desist from your deviant direction ? Can’t you see that I have judged sin in the past and that I can therefore judge it in the future ?”
Though it is true that we live in a skeptical sophisticated age with so called intelligent and educated populaces the world is moving to judgement.
The reason we know that is so, is that God has judged sin in the past, and sin is prevalent today. Just as no civilization has gotten away with sin in the past, our contemporary civilization will not get away with it either.
This is so despite the scoffing sceptical modernistic materialistic propaganda or practices of our day. It is fashionable for contemporary civilization to hold to the lie devised and propagated by their father the devil; that God is a God of love and that he will therefore not judge the world.
It is true that God is gracious , but after he has given us his message and enough time within which to grasp it and repent and change our ways and accept his way and word there is nothing left but judgement his warning to day is “ Behold now is the accepted time , behold now is the day of salvation” ( 2 Cor 6:2).
Prof GP:
I see BU college is again in session, lead professor in charge.
Now that the Egyptian paganism front is in abeyance for the moment, a few notes on 2 Pet 3, bearing in mind the earlier survey of eschatology in the Deception thread, Dec 16 here:
1 –> Titus 2:11 – 14 gives a parallel pattern to 1 Jn 3:1 – 3, Heb 10, Eph 4:17 – 24 ff, etc, for how we should walk in this age, and indeed gives an outline of Christian Discipleship in a nutshell (one that would to God the church in our region would heed):
Titus 22:1 But as for you, communicate the behavior that goes with1 sound teaching . . . .
2:11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people.16 2:12 It trains us17 to reject godless ways18 and worldly desires and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 2:13 as we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing19 of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.20 2:14 He21 gave himself for us to set us free from every kind of lawlessness and to purify for himself a people who are truly his,22 who are eager to do good.23 2:15 So communicate these things with the sort of exhortation or rebuke24 that carries full authority.25 Don’t let anyone look down26 on you.
2 –> So, the course of discipleship is one of participating in the community of liberating and transforming truth through the gospel working by love in the Spirit’s power and the purity of God, based on his Word. (Note the vital four-point balance: love, truth, power, purity. IT IS UNATTAINABLE OUTSIDE OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD.)
3 –> And, the mark of that mind and way of life is one that confidently looks to the Eternal Kingdom that is already in the world but not yet at culmination. That certain culmination is ever imminent and yet we know that “a day is with the Lord as 1,000 years for us”; i.e. God is eternal.
4 –> From Ac 17 and Heb 6:1 – 2, we know too that a foundational “ABC” teaching of the gospel the resurrection of Jesus is a deposit-payment on that resurrection at his Appearing, and will lead on to Eternal Judgement. That “by the man revealed” through resurrection from the dead. So, we are stewards of God in our generation at any given time, with the imminence of the appearing before God — whether global or personal. (For, once we face death, we face resurrection and judgement; all guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ, with 500+ witnesses.)
5 –> Thus, it is no surprise that mockers would come, to distract us from that hope, and to lead us into the ways of the world; in the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye and the pride of life. [1 Jn 2:15 – 17.]
6 –> And, one anchor to their materialism, their this-worldliness, is that they try to twist the blessings of science into a story that ignores the warning of Job 38: we were not there when the foundations of the world were laid, so we do not and cannot know the deep past by our own speculations on what we see. But, soon, instead of listening to and heeding the counsel of Him who was there [for he is our Creator-Sustainer] such men would darken God’s counsels by words without knowledge; falsely presented as SCIENTIA — literally, “knowledge.”
7 –> Little do these men reckon with the fact that [Jn 1:1 – 14] in the beginning the LOGOS –Reason Himself, Communication Himself, Wisdom Himself — was, and was with God and Was God, and that he made all things and without him was not anything made that was made. So, it is no surprise that we find intricate, life facilitating finetuning and organised complexity in the physics of the cosmos, and that we find the same in life, complete with language and algorithmic processing in the heart of the cell and in its biochemistry! Not to mention in the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematical and logical reasoning in revealing he splendours of the design of the world from microscopic to cosmic levels. Thus also, the unreasonable effectiveness of our minds and the voice of our consciences testify tot he Lord who made us and calls us to the ways of the truth and the right in love.
8 –> And, in the face of the chaos caused by our sins and permitted by God to stir us and remind us to reach out to him, however blindly [Ac 17], such men make up a different eschatology: progress to paradise on earth, by science, by technology, by clever political and bureaucratic messiahs; now in a unified global Babylon-ish world system.
9 –> Just as in the days of Nimrod, so soon as men were willing to forget the Flood!
10 –> The same flood that Peter reminds us [cf 1 Peter 3:18 – 22, and of course vv 5 – 7 in 2 Pet 3!], cataclysmed the world of those days, a world that spent 120 years mocking the preacher of righteousness as he built that which defied the way of the world since “time immemorial.” A FLOOD, on dry land like this — what nonsense! Rain? Rubbish, never happened, won’t happen. let’s get on with “real life: eating, drinking, making merry, revellings, marrying and being given in marriage etc etc. (And, BTW, science fiction is in large part the eschatology of this materialistic and/or neo-pagan view, including the social science version that spawned the horrendous messianic millennial myths of the last century, marxism and Fascism. today’s techno-fictions are often much the same, projecting a wonderful future in the stars without God; whose teachings and lessons and warnings are conveniently forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. Not to mention the projection of cooked computer scenarios to trigger panics and to bring us to welcome the waiting global enviro- economo- socio- political messiahs. [Cf my Dec 17 remarks on Cecil Rhodes and his heirs, here, in the Deception thread!)
11 –> Only a small remnant was saved then [only 8 out of millions! so stubborn were men’s hearts and so closed were their minds], and relatively speaking the same may yet happen. That is, we must beware!
12 –> So also, we can see that THE APOSTLE PETER, ON THE EVE OF HIS MARTYRDOM, PROPHESIED THE PRECISE CLUSTER OF ISSUES THAT HAS BEEN AT THE FOCUS OF DEBATE HERE AT BU IN RECENT WEEKS.
____________
Merest coincidence?
I doubt it!
So, let us think very carefully on these things. (And Prof GP’s exposition of 2 Peter 3 is a good place to begin.)
D
PS: Remember the awful significance of shutting one’s eyes to the truth one knows or should know — as the prophesied mockers of 2 Pet 3 do — as discussed also in the Deception thread, Dec 15, here. Resemblance to some of what has been going on at BU for months is NOT coincidental. So, mockers, take heed; and, repent before it is too late! Eternally, too late . . .
Madda de great stone got to move
Madda de great stone shall remove
(A fierce call for history to be rectified)
Great Stone
ROK
If the book of the dead existed before the flood it might help explain God’s anger at mankind and the destruction that befell Egypt at the time of the flood.
Maybe there are are alot more archaeological finds in Egypt to be unearthed and even more inscriptions will be deciphered on the walls …….
…. and maybe they will show just how far civilisations in Egypt advanced …..
… but maybe they are left there for future generations (read us) to unearth in order to see what befell the generation that lived at the time of the flood in Egypt.
Are the archaeological digs merely uncovering ruins covered by the sands of time or are they revealing an effect of the flood on one part of the world?
…. and is the lesson to be learnt from the exercise of digging out the ruins from the past …. rather than the uncovered ruins themselves?
Just a thought.
@Dictionary
You think that you can overload me and then claim victory? Smart move.
Read Homer who was the first European to write a book. He wrote the very first two publications in Europe and in one he said, “even the gods came from Ethiopia”.
Remember that Egypt was not the first nation on the Nile, actually it was the last. It is purported that Abraham was the first Jew, born around 1700 BC, while the nations along the Nile date back beyond 4100 BC.
By the time Abraham was born, the influence of Egypt was too great to be ignored. Along with what was particularly Egyptian, came the religious principles handed down from century to century and nation to nation by Africans along the Nile Valley.
As Egypt fell, its religion was adapted and changed to suit conditions. Acts such as the baptism and principles such as the trinity were subsequently added as ritual in the development of christianity. However, all the principles of the Egyptian religion remained intact.
For example:
The immaculate conception and virgin birth;
The holy cross
Death and resurrection of the Sun (Son)
Redemption
Forgiveness of sins
The idea of Worship and place of worship (church)
The Confessions (commandments)
John (above) asked a question in jest (I think) about what happened to people who sinned against the many gods. However, it is really an important question because if you sinned in order to be forgiven you had to appeal to the higher god or the God of gods for divine intervention. This is still a principle of christianity.
To simply state that I am rehashing old arguments is not good enough and if you read your scholarly extract correctly, you will see that it has been cleverly twisted.
It actually admits that christianity is but a melting pot of religious beliefs, but would want to have us believe that the foremost nations of the world that existed along the Nile Valley had no influence whatsoever on christianity. I beg to disagree with this type of intellectual dishonesty.
Take a look at how powerful nations affect and influence the world from what is happening today. Even in Barbados, the American influences have become second nature. We on the verge of adopting Haloween wholesale.
In another hundred years, our children will be celebrating Halloween as if it was Bajan. So to tell me that Christianity was influenced by all and sundry but not Egypt is downright dishonest.
By the time christianity came around the gods had already left this earth and what the likes of Abraham did was to take popular religious principles and turned them into what is today, christianity.
For example, Moses never happened, Joseph never happened. There is hardly a story in the bible that ever happened. For sure, christ never happened.
So as GP said, it would take scholars to write the bible. No fisherman, no uneducated person could contrive such stories and place them in a book and try to put them forward as facts. The rest of the world was not sleeping and you cannot provide a shred of evidence outside the bible to support a single story in the bible. Nothing from the records of Egypt. Nothing from the records of Rome.
No three wise men, no call to execute male babies. None of that. All sinister lies. As for Satan being the father of evil? Just look at that statement, only somebody living in a fairy tale world could believe that some god that fell into disrepute is the author and creator of everything a human being does wrong. Such a statement is so simplistic as to be absurd.
Keep climbing higher. Clog up the blog with longer and numerous posts so that mine get lost. For you it is only a matter of time before your bubble get burst. All the lies, twists, deceit that you create in order to clean up christianity will be in vain. There is no reasoning that can alter the facts. What you have to tell me is that Egyptian religion never existed. That they never used the cross as a symbol. That they never said the negative confessions, that there was never an Isis, etc.
Then you have to go and scrape all the information off the walls of the pyramids… and to tell me that you don’t have access to what is on the pyramid walls so it don’t count, is highly ridiculous. It tells me that you are willing to ignore truth so that your active imagination of what it should be would win out.
You guys are not interested in the truth. Nothing but a bunch of con-men.
@Dictionary
“Resemblance to some of what has been going on at BU for months is NOT coincidental. So, mockers, take heed; and, repent before it is too late! Eternally, too late . . .”
So good at fear-mongering. Is that all you have?
@John
“If the book of the dead existed before the flood it might help explain God’s anger at mankind and the destruction that befell Egypt at the time of the flood.”
The reason that you attribute to the flood are at best dubious. There is indeed a water mark showing the level of the water of the flood. It did not rise to higher lands and happened at a time when the gods had already departed this earth. From the evidence, the flood was no more than a natural disaster and it had to do with the Nile and its flow.
I do not have the exact data but the engineers of those times, did something with the Nile to prevent the water from rising that high again. It is interesting to note that Noah’s ark was never found, yet the flood would have occurred as recent as some time around 1700 B.C. and we can find miniature artifacts from Egypt dating back 4000 BC but no Ark? I tell you, the lack of evidence to support anything in the bible is blaring.
ROK:
You still have not addressed the substance, as summarised by my excerpting the experts, and as I have onward linked.
Instead you have again resorted to rhetorical dismissals meant to appeal to prejudices and conspiracy theorism; rather than to deal with substantial matters on the merits, which I have given above. (This is precisely the attitude warned against in 2 Peter 3, onlookers.)
In short, it is plain that here is no good case that the Christian Faith, and the underlying scriptural Hebraic Tradition, are rooted in Egyptian or other paganism. Otherwise, you would have long since made it.
Instead we see only distractors and caricatures and question begging.
For instance, the pagan Homer c. 800 BC is utterly irrelevant to Abraham 2000 – 1800 BC, or Moshe 1500 – 1300 BC, or David c. 1000 BC or even many of the prophets. And it is clear that the hebraic tradition in the scriptures cuts clean across the Egyptian pagan worldview. Indeed,t eh liberating judgements of the Exodus are specific judgements against the gods of Egypt as well as the Pharaoh.
E.g.:
Nile to blood: Hapi- Egyptian God of the Nile
Frogs: Heket- Egyptian Goddess of Fertility, Water, Renewal
Lice from the dust: Geb- Egyptian God of the Earth
Swarms of flies: Khepri- Egyptian God of creation, movement of the Sun, rebirth
Livestock: Hathor-Egyptian Goddess of Love and Protection
Ashes giving boils: Isis- Egyptian Goddess of Medicine and Peace
Hail: Nut- Egyptian Goddess of the Sky
Locusts: Seth- Egyptian God of Storms and Disorder
3 days darkness: Ra- The Sun God
Firstborn struck: Pharaoh- The Ultimate Power of Egypt
In short — and pardon directness, but such is more than warranted at this stage — plainly and sadly, you are trapped in the fallacies of selective hyperskepticism and closed-mindedness. [Cf here and here for specific details.]
D
PS: And, ROK, whether or no you are willing to accept it, playing footsie with pagan gods opens you up to demons. So, go see a good pastor or priest who knows what he is doing. (And here, onlookers, I speak as someone who has a little bit of practical knowledge on the matter. Others with such knowledge will back me up. Note too that Moshe and Aaron were challenged at each stage by the magicians of Egypt — until the magicians could not even stand before them. You don’t need to ask just who stood behind those occultic magicians!)
PPS: more detailed discussion.
Daddy’s gonna tell you no lies (*)
(*)=Cosmic Rays, Sun Ra
Exegesis of 2 Peter 3 verse 7
If God brought the world into being by His word, He can surely end it by His word. If God has intervened in judgment, He can do so again.
Thus the apostle tells us, “the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men”.
Peter expands his prophetic look from the world that then existed to the heavens and the earth which now exist.
Water was the chief element in the world before the Flood; fire is the destructive force in the present universe. But as the water of the preflood world was under the control of God, so the fire of the present age is kept in store (in restraint) by that same word.
The fire is just as literal as the water was in v. 5. Since the explosion of the hydrogen bomb men have little reason to doubt this prediction. We cannot take for granted that our environment will continue to support human life forever.
Everywhere scripture predicts a coming day of judgment when the ungodly will be made to submit forever to the horror they have chosen of existence without God.
“The present heaven and earth are by His Word reserved for…..fire,” not water. Remember the rainbow. What did the rainbow signify? God will never destroy the world again by water. So this time it’s being reserved to be destroyed by…what?…fire, “Kept for the judgment, the day of judgment, and the destruction of ungodly men.”
The present world system then is reserved for future judgment and that future judgment will come by the Word of God just as the past judgment came and just as the creation came. God will speak it into existence.
He is the creator and He is the destroyer. Only the next time He’ll do it by fire. It is reserved for fire. The word “reserved,” treasured up, thesaurizo, from which we get thesaurus, a treasury, stored up.
The world is waiting the destruction of fire. Once it was water, next time it will be fire. When we read about the future judgment of the world, and about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, we often read of fire as in Isaiah 13, where w read “When the final Babylon is destroyed it will be destroyed as were Sodom and Gomorrah.” How were they destroyed? By fire and brimstone.
The prophet Isaiah, again who had so much to say about judgment and so much to instruct us, says in 66:15, “For behold the Lord will come in fire and His chariots like the whirlwind to render His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire,” Isaiah 66:15.
Again, Malachi 4:1 fire; Micah 1:4 fire; Daniel 7:9 and 10 fire; Matthew 3:11 and 12, John the Baptist said He’s coming and He’s coming with fire. Second Thessalonians 1 verses 7 and 8 is so graphic when it says, “When Jesus comes He’ll be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire.” Next time fire.
Now we understand how that can happen. The sky isn’t full of water anymore, it’s full of flaming fire…stars, sun. The fire could come from up, or down.
There’s another way the fire could come, too, and that’s through the splitting of the atom, a nuclear holocaust would incinerate the earth and heavens, wouldn’t it?
Once a chain reaction begins that splits the atom, it could destroy the whole universe in an unbelievable, undescribable holocaust of fire.
The fire could come from beneath. The core of the earth is filled with fire, the temperature of which is 12,400 degrees Fahrenheit and there’s a thin ten-mile crust that separates us from it.
Every once in a while it belches out and we see what the fire is like, molten lava. By the way, that’s hot enough to melt everything. The highest melting point of any metal known is tungsten, it melts at 6,500 degrees, 12,400 will melt anything.
So whether it’s the fireballs out of the sky or whether it’s the unbelievable nuclear reaction that destroys the whole universe, or whether it’s the belching forth of fire from inside the earth, the earth sits in the midst of fire. Why? It is kept there, held there for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
That the world that is will be destroyed with fire has been established in verse 7 and verse 10. We may ask when will it be destroyed? We cannot know the date or the time or hour, but we can certainly know the chronological order.
Verse 7 tells us that the destruction of the present world will be destroyed in “ the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men.” Scripture makes it very clear that the judgement and destruction of ungodly men will occur after the millennium at the great white throne judgement, when they are raised out of the grave to appear before an holy God. ( Revelation 20: 12)
The same scoffers of verse 3 and others who thought it unnecessary to seek refuge from their sins in the blood of our saviour and have been rejecting it down through the ages and have said that they will stand before God on their own merits and by their own works at the judgement day.
The word “ungodly” is noteworthy here. When God flooded the world He spared the godly, there were eight…Noah, his wife, three sons, their wives. And when He comes in judgment by fire, it’s going to be for the ungodly not for us. So when this whole world goes up in smoke, this whole universe is burned to a crisp, we’re not going to be around.
We will be delivered out before the day of the Lord judgment ever hits. That judgment, by the way, will destroy this universe and out of it will be born the new heavens and the new earth.
Peter mentions them at verse 12, where he says, “The heavens are going to be destroyed by burning, the elements are going to melt with intense heat, and after that we will look for a new heavens and a new earth in which only righteousness dwells.”
@Dictionary
“you are trapped in the fallacies of selective hyperskepticism and closed-mindedness.”
You speaking of yourself. I am not trapped in the closed world of christianity that seeks to deny anything that would expand knowledge and encourage its followers to turn a blind eye to any truth that seems to run against it; you are.
It is just the same as science which was denounced by christianity as demonic, but when science started to support some of your beliefs, there was a rush to science. Very hypocritical wouldn’t you say?
“And, ROK, whether or no you are willing to accept it, playing footsie with pagan gods opens you up to demons.”
More fear-mongering? These kinds of threats or fears do not move me. They are empty and used by christianity as a means of last resort to defend the indefensible.
Finally, don’t ask me about anything in the bible. No verse, no 2Peter or anything like that to support what? I am looking for evidence outside of the bible to support it. I have found none so far and neither have you given me any.
Let me state my case clearly. During the period of the construction of the bible, other people were alive; entire societies and governments with officials that wrote reports, existed. The events in the bible are so profound that the societies which christ is said to have impacted would have made some mention of them.
Why is it that we can get all the literature and reports of the so-called persecution of the christians but none that even remotely support any story in the bible.
Could you imagine that the Red Sea parted and drowned (supposedly) thousands of soldiers from Egypt and not a word from the Egyptian records? Joke. Yet we can get reports of the defeats that the Egyptian army suffered and the battles they won, but this humiliating one was never reported?
It was all a plot to discredit Egypt and to blame the fall of Egypt on sin, like Sodom and Gomorrah. This ploy is used today on people who suffer unfortunate accidents, but what about those that follow the faith that suffer similar accidents and die? That different, right?
Somebody found a way to fill the void and attract a fold. Of course they started out as the laughing stock because people at the time knew better. Hence the persecution which was levelled against them. The teachings of these early christians were described as wicked back then. Today, they are even more wicked.
Exegesis of 2 Peter 3:8
We’ve seen the argument from Scripture, the argument from history, now here’s the argument from eternity.
Verse 8, “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as if a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.
What’s he saying? Well somebody is going around saying, “Well, He doesn’t come, why is He waiting?” Peter says, “Why don’t you look at it from God’s side? From your viewpoint it looks like a long time, from His viewpoint, no.” God looks at time differently than we do. That’s the argument from eternity.
The apostle has exposed the foolish arguments of the scoffing materialist who, willingly ignorant of the word of God, takes occasion by the delay in the fulfilment of God’s promise to deny that the Lord is coming.
He now entreats the beloved of the Lord not to be ignorant of the reason for this delay. Peter reminds his readers that there is something they must keep in mind when thinking of the parousia of Christ.
First, let the believer remember that what may seem a long delay in our eyes is but a brief moment with the Lord, for “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”. He asks us to recall the difference in the nature
of God as compared to men.
Time and Eternity are two quite different entities, and since God is eternal and man finite, they look at time in different ways. The quote is from Psalm 90:4 where man is pictured as “numbering his days” while God is “from everlasting to everlasting.”
In eternity there is no time, i.e. past or future, but only the present.
Thus “time” and “delay” are virtually meaningless to God, and man must learn to adjust to that. This should help us greatly in facing the centuries that have passed since New Testament times.
It’s true that Jesus may come at any time. But we must understand that it is in His time that He comes. We have, in Scripture, the promise of providential timing. And we need to see that providential timing transcends human timetables. But we are not to let this fact escape our notice, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
What does it mean that “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day?” Some have taken that to mean that one day equals a thousand years. But from the context I don’t see how we can prove that. What he is saying here is that time, as we know it, is not of first consideration to God, since God transcends time.
He does not live in time. He lives outside of time. He, as it were, looks down upon time, and sees the beginning and the end together. Providential timing transcends human timetables.
That is why we must not put very much stock in human timetables for Jesus’ return. While He must return sometime, the Scripture plainly teaches that He shall come at a day and hour which no man knows.
BUT HE IS COMING SOON FRIENDS
@GP
“If God brought the world into being by His word…”
Big “IF”. Imagine a man with the absolute truth starting out a dissertation with “if”. It tells me that you know that it is simply belief without any proof whatsoever.
Yet you are trying to profess to people that you have the absolute truth. Thanks for the confession. It tells me that you are very deceptive and that you know it too.
Yeah, brimstone and fire. Nothing new? I am disappointed.
Exegesis of 2 Peter 3:9
“ Peter’s opponents explained the seeming delay in the parousia as proof that God is untrustworthy in fulfilling his promises. Many today take the same position. But Peter’s answer is that it is not faithlessness or even slowness which delays the coming of the end, but patience!
The word is makrothumos, “that quality by which God bears with sinners, holds back his wrath, refrains from intervening in judgment as soon as the sinner’s deeds deserve it, though not indefinitely” (Bauckham).
His mercy moves Him to prolong the day of salvation. Behind His apparent delay is a heart that is not willing that any should perish. Many scriptures establish that fact, notably 1 Tim. 2:4, Rom. 11:32, 2 Cor. 5:19, and Ezek. 18:23.
He has made provision for all to come to repentance, but if they exercise their God-given free will to refuse He cannot prevent it, for it is that free will which marks us out as men and not animals or robots.”
In answer to the questions “Why has Jesus waited so long? Why has He delayed His coming? In 1 Peter 3:9, Peter presents an answer and argument from the character of God.
He says the certainty of the coming of Christ can be argued from Scripture, from history, from eternity’s view, and fourthly, from the character of God.
“The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
Peter’s thesis is that God’s delay about keeping His promise is not because He’s unfaithful to His Word, or because He doesn’t tell the truth, or because He’s impotent or because He’s indifferent, or because is not coming or that He has had to change or postpone His coming, or because He’s just busy doing something else as some men count slowness. Some men might think that.
But the reason He’s delaying is His patience for people to repent, and because He’s long suffering. Peter is saying there is nothing strange about God doing this.
He is saying “ Don’t you remember in 1 Peter 3:20 I wrote about the patience of God in the days of Noah, when it took Noah 120 years to build the boat, and that while he preached righteousness in that time that God was very patient as he gave them an opportunity to repent? Well God has not changed his modus operandi.”
Peter wants us to see that God’s providential timing is based on His redemptive love. He wants us to appreciate that is because of His redemptive love. The Lord Jesus Christ has delayed His coming because He desires for every individual to come to a place of repentance and faith in Him. Jesus does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance.
What has held Jesus back is His love. Because of His delay, many have had the privilege to come into the kingdom, and now, their eternal destiny is secure. Their home is Heaven. And whenever He comes, He comes to take them there. I’m thankful, aren’t you, that Jesus didn’t come before we became Christians. Providential timing is based on His redemptive love.
In verse 9, we are told that Christ’s return is God’s promise- this is a PROMISORY NOTE. Let us never forget that the promise of His coming is “His promise”, and that His word cannot fail.
In verse 10 a prophetic word concerning the Second Coming of Christ and the events that will follow it. – this is a PROPHETIC NOTE.
We are told that His coming will be like a thief. In other words, many people will be surprised at His coming. Many in the church will be surprised. He may not come in our lifetime, but then again, He may come today.
Although He will come in His time, His coming is certain. One thing we can say for sure: His coming is closer than it’s ever been.( Rom 13:11). We need to wake up as Christians. His coming may be closer than we realize.
While the Scripture says that He will come as a thief, it also indicates that we should be aware of the signs of the times. As a matter of fact, it indicates that we can actually be in the position where we’re not caught off guard.
Look at what 1 Thessalonians 5:1-4 says: Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like birth pangs upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you like a thief.
We must ask ourselves the question, “How shall we then live?” The reality of His immanent Second Coming is a call to all Christians. It is a call to be a certain kind of people. It is a call to be a people who have and are a powerful testimony.
The major lesson of verse 9 is that we ought not to be deceived by God’s patience. God is very patient because he has a lot of time. He has eternity behind him and eternity ahead of him. He is quite unlike us, who are always late or hustling and bustling and rushing to keep appointments. Since God has eternity, he is in no hurry.
God’s patience deceives many as we read in Ecclesiastes 8:11. “ Because judgement against an evil work is not executed speedily , the hearts of the sons of men are set in them to do evil. We need to realize that God will move in time — in his time.
Just as Paul warned the skeptical and cynical Athenians, he warns a similarly skeptical and cynical and scoffing world today that God has winked at ignorance in the past, but now commands men everywhere to repent. ( Acts 17:30).
The delay in Christ’s coming is only to facilitate this process. We will no doubt recall too, that Paul in his appearance before Felix in Acts 24:25 reasoned with him concerning righteousness, and temperance, and judgement to come.
Verse 7 tells us when this judgement will occur. Therefore all are warned to WITNESS, WALK, WATCH and WAIT; today Jesus is Saviour, then he will be judge.
Jesus wanted to keep us in the world for a purpose, but he did not want the world in us. He wants us to live Holy lives as we see the day approaching, and as we see things happening around us and as we read of events that are coming to pass.
Verse nine tells us then that there is a reason for God’s delay. It is not that the Lord is slack in the fulfilment of His promise, but that He is longsuffering, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”.
In His grace God gives space for repentance before the judgment falls; in his unbelief man take occasion by the delay to deny that judgment will ever come.
To listen to the scoffers and deny the promise of His coming is to be left in darkness, hopelessly drifting on to eternity, not knowing how all the evil of an ungodly world will be dealt with or how the godly will be brought into eternal blessing.
Peter wants us to be certain that whether it be the judgment of the ungodly, or the blessing of the godly, all will be reached by the coming of Christ. Let go the promise of His coming and all is lost to our souls!
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise of returning but He is long-suffering in grace, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
We understand God’s gracious slowness. There is but one thing God is always slow about; and that is judgment. He never judges till He has warned, and given space for repentance. How swift He is to save! How quick to bring peace to the troubled conscience! He is only slow to judge.
He has not come because He wants souls to be saved! His long-suffering is salvation.He wills that every soul that trusts the blood of His Son should be saved, but He is not willing that any should perish , for He desires that all should come (or go forward) to repentance
The conclusion of Peter’s argument, by the way, is in verse 10, “But the day of the Lord will come,” It’s going to happen. You may ridicule it or doubt it. You may not want it because you want no accountability and you want to live in lust and immorality and sexual freedom.
And you may believe in the uniformitarian doctrine of history that says everything continues exactly as it always has. But it’s going to come no matter what you believe, no matter what you want and no matter how you ridicule it. This is the message of verse nine for the scoffer.
I divert here from my exegesis of 2 Peter 3 to include a short disertation on the concept of the DAY OF THE LORD, which is mentioned in 2 Peter 3:10
THE DAY OF THE LORD:
Many of the Old Testament prophets make reference to this momentous period of time. Some use the terms “the day” or “the great day” or as “that day”, but all by this as expression strongly relate to God’s rule of the earth and therefore to His sovereign purpose for world history and specific events within that history.
The Day of the Lord refers to God’s special interventions into the course of world events to judge His enemies, accomplish His purpose for history, and thereby demonstrate that He is the sovereign God of the universe.
Diligent perusal of the pages of the Promises of God reveal that references to the Day of the Lord occur seventy-five times in the Old Testament.
This phrase became such an understandable subject of the Old Testament that by the time of Zechariah, one of the last of the prophets, could use the term “in that day” and it was understood that he meant the Day of the Lord.
This phrase had definite connotations and was the great theme of the writings of the Old Testament prophets, who related it to the future kingdom promised in the Old Testament, and connected it with the coming of Christ as it relates to the setting up of this kingdom. The expression “the day of the Lord” clearly has an end-time (eschatological) meaning.
All honest Bible scholars who seek to become genuine students of prophecy must obtain a sound grasp the concepts presented in the doctrine about the day of the Lord, as this is fundamental to proper and right division of the scriptures which deal with the pertinent and practical promises of the end time.
We must “get it out of the realm of the nebulous and tenuous, and avoid thinking of it as a vague theory and a spurious theology, as is done today even in many seminaries,”(a) for the subject of the Day of the Lord was, and still is a very important part of the program of God. ”( McGee on Thessalonians)
McDonald defines the day of the Lord as “any time when God judges men and their evil ways, and gets the victory and great glory to His name.
In the future, it will be the time of great trouble after the rapture of the church, which will be followed by one thousand 1000 years when Christ will rule on earth”.
“It is the day when the Lord will judge and interfere once more directly in the course of this world’s politics.”
“The day of the Lord” is a technical phrase that refers to a long period of time which begins when the day of Christ ends with the rapture of the church, incorporates the Great Tribulation, the judgment at the end of the tribulation, the thousand year reign of Christ, (see Acts 2:20; 2 Peter. 3:10; Revelation 6:17 and the final judgment— the Great White Throne Judgment, and ends with the creation of the new heavens and earth.
When Peter says in 2 Peter 3: 10 that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief” he is referring to the rapture of the church. Then with the next phrase he describes the destruction of the heavens and earth. Thus in one verse Peter talks about the beginning of the day of the Lord and its ending.
It is important for us to understand the sequence of events involved in the day of the Lord, so we will give this general summary.
Jesus will first come at the rapture invisibly and unknown to men in general (the PAROUSIA), raise the righteous dead, and take them along with the saints who are yet alive from the earth for a 7-year period.
During this time there will be great suffering called the “tribulation” for the wicked people who were left on earth.
At the end of these 7 years, the forces of evil will gather to fight against Jesus, who will visibly return (EPIPHANEIA) to defeat them at the battle of Armageddon.
Jesus will then establish an earthly, civil kingdom over which He will reign as King from Jerusalem for 1000 years.
At the end of 1000 years, the wicked dead will be raised, then all men will be judged and receive their eternal rewards.
The following are some important features about “the day of the Lord” that must be appreciated. These are that:
1. It includes a time of great judgment and wrath on all the nations and on Israel (Isaiah. 2:12-21; 13:9-16; 34:1-8; Joel. 1:15-2:11, 28-32; 3:9-12; Amos 5:18-20; Obadiah 15-17; Zephaniah. 1:7-18).
2. It is associated with the overthrow of God’s enemies (Isaiah. 2:12).
3. It is God’s instrument of wrath to purge out the rebels from Israel and results in Israel’s return to the Lord (Ezekiel 20:33-39).
4. While it begins with judgment to defeat the enemies of God, it ushers in a time of great blessing called the millennium in which Christ will reign with the church, the body of Christ (Zephanah1:7-18; 3:14-17).
“The significant truth revealed here is that the day of the Lord which first inflicts terrible judgments ends with an extended period of blessing on Israel, which will be fulfilled in the millennial kingdom.
Based on Old Testament revelation, the day of the Lord is a time of judgment, culminating in the second coming of Christ, and followed by a time of special divine blessing to be fulfilled in the millennial kingdom.
5. The day of the Lord is also known by the terms “the time of Jacob’s distress” (Jeremiah 30:7) and “Daniel’s seventieth week” (Daniel. 9:24-29).
Many other students of prophecy refer to this time as the Tribulation (see Matthew 24:9, 21, 29; Mark 13:19, 24; Revelation 7:14). The chief passage on the many characteristics and events of this time is Revelation 6-19.
What is clear, is that in the many passages that refer to the day of the Lord that they all agree that in the time when men are proclaiming peace, but preparing for war; in a time when they are holding to a form of godliness but denying the powers thereof; in a time when they are declaring that the problems of life are being solved, then when actually they are in greater danger than they have ever been before, then the day of the Lord will come.
There are people who wrongly associate the expression “the Lord’s day” with Sunday or even with the Sabbath.
Nowhere in the Bible is Sunday described as “the day of the Lord,” but always as “the first day of the week.” (cf. Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19; Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2).
“We must recognize there is a great deal of difference between the day of the Lord and the Lord’s day. Sunday is the Lord’s day, for it was the day when our Lord arose from the dead.
But the day of the Lord is the day of the manifestation of God’s hand directly in human affairs. At the present hour even though God is working through the events of history bringing about overthrows, uprisings, and calamities as well as periods of prosperity and blessing, nevertheless His hand is hidden in the glove of history.
But all the writers of Scripture agree that a day is coming when God will intervene directly in the affairs of men again.” (3)
Let us here recall why there is a need for a future day of the Lord occur? After God created man, He gave him dominion over everything on the earth (Gen. 1:26,28; Psalm 8:3-9), intending that man should serve as his representative to administer God’s rule over the earthly province of His universal domain.
In other words, God designed the government of the earth to be a theocracy, a form of government in which God is the sovereign ruler of the earth, but His rule is administered through Adam, a human representative.
However, when God’s enemy, Satan, convinced the first Adam to rebel against God and His rule, God’s theocratic kingdom rule over the world system was lost (Genesis 3).
Through Adam’s rebellion, Satan usurped the rule of the world system away from God (Luke. 4:5-6; John. 14:30; 1 John. 5:19).
Since that time, Satan and rebellious man have been dominating the world system according to their own thoughts and ways (Isaiah. 55:7-9). In other words, Satan and man have been having their day in the world. During their day, they try to establish and assert their own sovereignty and deity.
But God’s purpose for world history is to glorify Himself by demonstrating that He alone is the sovereign God. In order to accomplish this purpose, God has determined to have His day in the world in the end times of world history (Isaiah. 2:10-22).
Several times in the past, God broke into the day of Satan and rebellious man with the interventions, or Days of the Lord, that were noted earlier. He did this for several reasons: to accomplish an immediate divine purpose (namely, the disruption, frustration, or destruction of some plan, purpose, or accomplishment of Satan and man), to graphically remind Satan and man that God is still the ultimate sovereign over the earth and universe, and to give Satan and man a foretaste or forewarning of the ultimate Day of the Lord that will come at the end of world history.
Proper perusal of the Scriptures indicate that there were several past Days of the Lord in which God exercised and demonstrated His sovereign judgment on the nations. For example, He raised up Assyria to judge the northern kingdom of Israel during the 7th century B.C. (Amos 5:18,20), Babylon to judge the southern kingdom of Judah during the 6th and 5th century B.C. (Lamentations 1:12; 2:1,21-22; Ezekiel. 7:19; 13:5; Zechariah 1:7-13; 2:2-3), Babylon to judge Egypt and its allies during the 5th century B.C. (Jeremiah. 46:10; Ezekiel. 30:3), and Medo-Persia to judge Babylon during the 5th century B.C. (Isaiah. 13:6,9).
It can thus be seen that in the past Days of the Lord, God used His direct, miraculous works as well as human instruments and human activity through war to execute His purpose against His enemies.
The Scriptures indicate that the concept of the Day of the Lord is also applicable to the future and that the future Day of the Lord will be far more significant than those of the past.
God will in that time intervene to restore and exercise His theocratic kingdom rule over the world through the last Adam, Jesus Christ as taught in Zechariah. 14:1-9; 1Corinthians 15:45,47; Revelation 20:1-6.
For example, Isaiah 2:10-22 describes a Day of the Lord that will involve the sixth seal which occurs during the future 70th week of Daniel 9, as described by the Apostle John in Revelation 6:12-17.
Both Isaiah 34:1-8 and Obadiah 15 describe a future Day of the Lord when God will judge all the nations, or Gentiles, of the world. Since none of the past Days of the Lord referred to earlier have so far involved divine judgment of all the nations, it is clear that Isaiah 34 and Obadiah refer to the future.
Joel 3:1-16 and Zechariah 14:1-3, 12-15 also refer to a future Day of the Lord that will involve God’s judgment of the armies of all the nations of the world, when those armies are gathered in Israel to wage war against that nation and the city of Jerusalem and when the Messiah will come to war against them. According to Revelation 16.12-16, those armies will gather when the sixth vial or bowl is poured out during the 70th week of Daniel 9.
In addition, Revelation 19:11-21 teaches that at this time Christ will wage war against them when he comes from Heaven in His glorious Second Coming.
In I Thessalonians 5:2 the Apostle Paul taught that there would be in the future a Day of the Lord that bring sudden, inescapable destruction on the unsaved of the world. This has clearly not yet come to pass.
Just as in the days of the Lord that are past, God intervened into the course of world events to judge His enemies, accomplish His purpose for world history, and thereby demonstrate that He is – the sovereign Cod of the universe, in the future Day of the Lord, He will do the same- but with one exception. This will be the final day of the Lord.
In the present day, Satan and rebellious man exert a rule over the world system that is characterized by darkness only, (Ephesians. 6:12; Col. 1:13). In the future Day of the Lord, God will establish control over His rule over the entire world system during the Millennium in visible form.
He will thereby fully demonstrate who He is – the sovereign God of the universe (Exodus 15:11).
It is noteworthy that the day of the Lord will have a period of darkness in which sin will be judged and a period of light only, in keeping with God’s characteristic of light and in whom there is no darkness at all (1 John. 1:5).
The day of the Lord is a day of salvation and judgment, or a day of salvation through judgment. It involves two distinct aspects: judgment followed by blessing. Zephaniah 3 **clearly records these two distinct aspects of this awesome day, by revealing that after Israel repents and returns to the Lord, they will be restored under the righteous rule of Messiah.
It is imperative to understand this concept of the dual nature of the future Day of the Lord, for a perfect interpretation of the related Scriptures about this doctrine.
To illustrate, just as from the time of creation a day consisted of two phases – a time of darkness (“evening”) followed by a time of light (“day,” Gen. 1:4-5) – so the future Day of the Lord will consist of two phases – a period of darkness with judgment followed by a period of light with the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises of his sovereign rule and blessing.
The first phase will be a period of unprecedented, concentrated judgment involving the 70th week of Daniel 9 and the Second Coming of Christ.
In this phase, God, who throughout most of history has permitted Satan and rebellious man to have their day, will suddenly intervene to destroy the rule of Satan and man over the world system, to evict them from the earth, and thereby to end their day in the world (Isaiah. 42:13-14; Rev. 6-19). This phase will be characterized by darkness and an intense outpouring of God’s wrath.
The second phase will be a period of divine dominion over the world system. In this phase, God will intervene to restore and exercise His theocratic kingdom rule over the world through the last Adam, Jesus Christ (Zechariah 14:1-9; 1Corinthians 15:45,47; Revelation 20:1-6). This phase will be characterized by light and an outpouring of God’s blessing.
The phase of judgment will be highlighted by darkness and a tremendous outpouring of divine wrath on the world during the 70th week of Daniel 9. (Joel 2:1-2; Amos 5:18-2a; Zechariah. 1:14-15; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Rev***). Amos 5:18-20 emphasizes that this will be the total nature of the Day of the Lord for God’s enemies. That day will bring no divine light or blessing to them.
In contrast, the phase of blessing will also be characterized by light, an outpouring of divine blessing, and the administration of God’s rule.
Joel, after talking about the darkening of the sun, moon, and stars and God’s future Day of the Lord judgment of the armies of the nations that have gathered in Israel (3:9-16), then foretold great divine blessing “in that day” (vv.17-21).
Zechariah concurs by teaching that the future Day of the Lord would be one when all nations will wage war against Jerusalem and the Messiah will come to earth to fight against the nations (14:1-5).
Zechariah also indicated that, although the earlier part of “that day” will be characterized by darkness, the latter part will be characterized by light (vv.6-7), great blessing (v.8), and God’s rule over all the earth (v.9). This time of light, divine blessing, and God’s rule will be the norm in the Day.
To complete this discussion on the day of the Lord, we will here summarize the major Scriptures on this topic. Book by book
The several warnings about the judgments of the Lord on that day have been recorded so that people should not lightly brush them aside and disregard them.
The global extent of the destruction and the reason for these judgments, namely, an excessively wicked generation of people like that in the days of Noah and Lot, is certainly repeated time and again for emphasis. A word to the wise is enough!
Knowledge about God’s end-time program, as well as the future expectation of the coming of the heavenly Bridegroom, is given as a strong incentive towards holy living and an unwavering commitment to Christ. Peter says: “Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:11-12).
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