Look, Jesus Is Coming!

Ultimately, we look ahead to the Savior, and in verse 8, He does that. He directs our attention by saying, But beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. It's simple to say what seems to us like a long time is really a short time to God.

God doesn't see time like we do, and He's not limited to our timetable. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares what signs you can look for as you wait for Christ's return. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will spur you on in your own faith journey as you explore the inspiring stories of women in the Bible. You know Proverbs 31, the go-to passage that describes the ideal Christian woman and wife. But let's be honest, that ideal can be as intimidating as it is inspiring. Here's Skip Heitzig with more. Can I just tell you it's exhausting to just read that, let alone how on earth women could you ever do that?

Well, let me say first of all, you can't do that in a day. He's not giving the 24-hour description of the virtuous wife. This is a woman over time. Get to know some of the most incredible women in the Bible and in history with two inspiring resources, a six-message CD collection from Pastor Skip on prominent women in Scripture, plus the book Seven Women by best-selling author Eric Metaxas. This bundle is our thanks when you give $35 or more to help expand the Bible teaching outreach of Skip Heitzig. Charm is deceitful, beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.

Call now to request these captivating resources as our thanks for your generous gift, 800-922-1888, or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in 2 Peter chapter 3 as Skip Heitzig starts today's study. We're telling you what Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior has already said, and He is simply saying what the prophets have always predicted. There's been this continuous revelation of the day of the Lord that is coming, and I want to stir up your pure minds. Do you stir your mind up in the mornings? I've made it a practice over the last many years since I've been a believer to wake up in the morning and one of the first activities after brushing my teeth and those kind of things is to open up the Bible and to read a section and meditate on it and to pray about it and work my way through the text of the whole Bible. I want to stir up my mind. Now, since the second coming is one verse in every 30 verses, make sure that you read at least 30 verses a day.

How's that? Get that thought reignited back in your brain and your heart. So in verse 1, he says, I want to stir up your pure minds. Then notice in verse 2, he says, be mindful. So you get the idea that he's trying to engage our mind. Let me make a suggestion that you engage or stir up your mind enough to actually memorize scripture.

Not all of it, but some of it. Key verses. Nothing will help you in your spiritual formation like memorizing verses of scripture that can be called to mind later on when you need them. Most all of us know about Martin Luther, the great reformer and the great one who wrote about justification by faith. What most of us don't know is that he did much of his work from pure memory of the scripture.

That when he was early on in a monastery, an Augustinian monastery, he had a mentor, Johann Staupitz, who taught him to memorize whole books of the New Testament so that later on he could call them up from memory and write about the great doctrines of faith, justification by faith. So look back at the scriptures. Let your minds be stirred by what the prophets wrote and what Jesus said and what the apostles recorded. Second, look around at scoffers. Verse three, knowing this first or preeminently, not chronologically, but as a matter of importance, knowing this first that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming?

For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. It's interesting that when you look at the prophets who spoke about the worldwide reign of the Messiah, they predicted it. They also predicted the scoffers or they record the modern day mockers in their day in responding to what they wrote or spoke. So in Isaiah chapter five, Jeremiah chapter 17, Ezekiel chapter 12, Malachi chapter two, it also includes the response of the unbelieving world in terms of mocking or scoffing. Now a scoffer is someone who treats lightly what should be taken seriously.

You've had it happen to you. If you've ever tried to share your faith at all, you have encountered scoffers. You tell them about the veracity of scripture or Jesus Christ wanting to come into your life or the Bible says this and you'll get everything from a, to an intimidating line of questions like, you're not a fundamentalist, are you? You don't believe in that book, literally do you.

You're not a close minded, nonthinking idiot, are you? All of that language is meant to intimidate you. That's mocking, scoffing language.

That's the language of the scoffer. When I was a boy, I had a friend and I, I even hesitate to use the word, but he had become a good friend and he was the boy your mother warned you about. My mother did and I didn't pay any attention to her. His name was Richard Wilhite. Richard was a liar. He was a thief.

He was a drug user and seller and buyer and many, many other things. He was also the bass player in my band as a kid and we became friends and we did lots of bad things together and then I became a Christian. So one of the first things I did is try to find where he was living and I got a hold of him and called him on the phone, told him the gospel and he scoffed. He mocked. He hung up the phone. I called him back. He listened a little more carefully. I thought he was interested. He hung up the phone again. I called him back a third time.

He did not even pick up the phone. Next day in the newspaper I read that he was arrested for a half a million dollars worth of heroin, a sale that he participated in. He was in jail now. Didn't know where he was.

I had just heard that he had gotten out of jail some years later and as soon as he was out was shot in the head and killed by someone from those drug deals years before and that haunted me. That really bothered me for obvious reasons. I knew him once as a friend and I wonder why did he and why do others scoff and mock and take lightly what should be treated seriously? And I found my answer in this verse. Verse 3 tells you why. Knowing this first the scoffers will come in the last days walking according to their own lusts. In other words they want to continue living for their temporary pleasures and anything that would speak of the judgment of God and hold them accountable for their immoral behavior they want to write it out of the script.

That's why. That's their motive. Well what is the basis of these scoffers? What is the basis of their belief? Verse 4 tells you what it is. Here's their philosophy. And saying, notice it's in quotes, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.

What are they saying? They're saying that we live in a closed naturalistic system and events just move along steadily without any kind of cataclysmic event or punctuated event from heaven. It is a belief system known as uniformitarianism. I don't care if you ever remember the word but you ought to know what it means. It is the prevalent philosophy and has been the last hundred years in Western culture. Uniformitarianism. Things are moving steadily and slowly without punctuated cataclysm.

They always have been and they always will be. Now here's why this is a fallacious and wrong view of the world because it has a person who measures all of history which they haven't lived through. They've only lived through a tiny little slice of time. They're willing to make a judgment on all of history based on what they only have observed. All things continue. Jesus isn't coming back because he never really did come back.

That's sort of like saying I'll never die because I've never died. Back years ago in the 19th century there was a British lawyer and geologist who was very, very influential and he was one of the first ones to articulate this uniformitarianism belief. His name was Eric Lyle. He wrote a book called The Principles of Geology and he impacted a great number of researchers. One very special one named Charles Darwin who read his book, was moved by his book and even brought that book with him to the Galapagos Islands when he made his famous research that led to the theory of evolution. I remember my first day in integrated zoology when my professor spent an hour speaking about uniformitarianism and knocking special creation. He basically said that history maintains an uninterrupted flow of steady events over a long evolution. There are no cataclysms to which Peter would say, you got that wrong. You got that wrong on two counts. Number one, creation and number two, the great flood.

Those are the two examples that Peter uses here. The creation of the earth, that's a pretty cataclysmic event where God interrupted the flow of things and then the great flood in which he destroyed the world. By the way, I don't have a lot of time to get into this, but there is a growing number of geologists today who have abandoned uniformitarianism and believe now in historical catastrophism. They say the data available shows that there is great evidence of catastrophe. We live in a volatile universe. Now I do believe that there is general uniformity in the world. There are predictable patterns that exist around us and that's simply evidence of God's providential care. But also the biblical worldview is that we live in an open system and God, because he's God, can, has, and will do what he wants when he wants to do it. And just because you and your little observable lifetime have seen a steady flow of events doesn't mean it's always been that way, nor will it continue that way. That's his argument. And he, in verse five, interestingly, writes about the creation account in a single verse.

It's enough to look at, at least. For they, notice, willfully forget. Remember, they want to push this stuff aside for their own immoral behavior. For they willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were of old. How did all this get here? God spoke it. God said it. God said, let there be this and there was that. They willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth, now this is interesting, standing out of water and in the water by which the world that then existed perished being flooded with water. In other words, what Peter is saying is that God shaped the earth between two areas of watery mass. It's the creation account from Genesis where on day two he separated the waters above from the waters beneath. He took the waters above and developed a water canopy, a vapor canopy around the earth. The waters below on the earth were in the seas and the rivers and underground reservoirs and lakes, et cetera. Today, post-flood, the earth is still four-fifths water. This point is that water was a huge part of the original creation and it became part of the original destruction in verse six, by which the world that then existed perished being flooded with water. By the way, the word flooded here, listen to what it is in Greek, katakluzo. What does that sound like? Cataclysm.

That's exactly what it is. It was a punctuated event where God interrupted the flow of history with a great cataclysm, a deluge, an upheaval, a catastrophe. I've always believed that the flood helps explain a variety of things that otherwise would be inexplicable in the natural universe. For example, the presence of inland seas, the great inland seas that exist in China, in India, and in this country. We have in this country the Great Basin, it's called, which encompasses almost the entire state of Nevada, part of Southern California, Southern Oregon, great parts of Utah, et cetera. That Great Basin, Lake Bonneville, evidences that it was once this huge, massive inland sea and shoreline evidence is still in existence. The only thing that is left is that little thing called the Great Salt Lake.

That's the remnants of it. Also, the flood explains the evidence of forests that have been compressed by water, layers of water-laid deposits that have formed coal in every place on earth, even in the North Pole and in the South Pole. Then there's the fossil record. This is important. If I were to tell you, hey, go throw a leaf in your backyard and then say, how long would it take for you to get a fossil?

You'd say, what, are you crazy? You don't get a fossil by throwing a leaf in your backyard. You get a fossil if the earth opened up and the leaf got sucked in and then slammed against it. If a cataclysm happened, then over time you would have fossilization, but not just by uninterrupted nothingness. But there's the fossil record. Sea life that has been found atop and between layers of coal, fossils of whales in Michigan, fossilized sharks found in Ohio, fossilized fish found in Wyoming, get this, at 7,000 feet above sea level.

How'd they swim up there? Then there are fossils that are out of order. You have trees that are found extending through several different strata layers, supposedly laid down over millions and millions and millions of years.

So how do you have a tree growing through all of them? Then there's the great slab of sediment near Agate Springs, Nebraska, bones of some 9,000 different animals that have been tossed and crushed violently and buried by water and dirt. Peter said it happened, but there are people who are willingly, the old King James says, ignorant, willingly ignorant.

Well Roger used to say, everyone's ignorant just on different subjects. It's interesting how Jesus said, as it was in the days of Noah, so it will also be at the coming of the Son of Man. Do you think they mocked Noah building a boat? You know where he built the boat right? In inland Iraq. So there's a guy building a big, big, big boat in Iraq and they're going why? It would be sort of like somebody putting a yacht factory in Rio Rancho. You'd say, I don't get it. What are you going to do with those yachts?

You're not going to use them here. So we look back at the scriptures, we look around at the scoffers, but ultimately we look ahead to the Savior and in verse 8 he does that. He directs our attention by saying, but beloved, do not forget this one thing that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. It's simply to say what seems to us like a long time is really a short time to God. The reason he does this is because he knows that people like us even would be saying, why has it taken so long for Jesus to return? Why the delay? Now they were asking that 2000 years ago.

We're asking that on steroids today. 2000 years have passed since then and he's still not back and we're still hoping and we're still waiting and it almost sounds like, yeah, maybe these uniformitarianists are right. Why has it taken so long? First of all, God counts things differently.

It seems like a long time. It's just been two days to God. Reminds me of the story of the little boy who was praying and he closed his eyes. He said, Lord, somewhere in your Bible it says that a thousand years is like a day to you and it also says in your Bible that you own a cattle on a thousand Hills, which means like a million billion dollars is like $1 to you. And then he prayed, Lord, could I just have one dime? And the Lord spoke to him and said, sure, just a minute.

Why the delay? The answer is found in verse nine. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. That's the reason he wants to see as many people saved as possible. God just tell you I'm glad he waited 2000 years because otherwise I wouldn't have been around to enjoy his salvation. So I'm glad that God is merciful, but you ought to know this.

God is punctual. He hadn't come yet, but he will come. Look at verse 10, but the day of the Lord will come. It will come. Doubters may scoff. Doubters may doubt. Unbelievers will ignore, but Jesus Christ is coming again.

He's coming again. I want you to just to end on one word that really has something to do with all of us here, and that's back in verse nine. That's the word long suffering.

Look at it again. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise. He'll be right on time, his time as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, toward you, toward me, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. I want to tell you about the word long suffering as we close. It's one of the great words of the scripture long suffering. Here's the word in the original language, macro thomeo.

It's a compound word. It's from sticking two words together, macro, which means big, large macro, not micro, macro, and the word thomeo, which means to burn or literally great anger. So literally the word long suffering means large, great anger. And what it means in reference to God is that God has an amazing capacity to store up well-deserved anger and to store it up and to store it up and to store it up until he finally spills it out in judgment. He has an amazing capacity to wait and to wait and to hear scoffers, scoff every generation, to let bad things happen every year. One day he will act, but until then he's long suffering.

The fact that you and I can even have the opportunity to discuss it shows the kind of patience God has for us. There was a young college student who had a conversation with his uncle Joe and uncle Joe said, so what are you going to do when you get out of college? He said, then I'm going to get a good job.

Uncle Joe says, good thinking. Then what? Well then I'm going to launch my career and I'm going to get married.

Ah, that's good planning. He said, get married. Yep. Have a family.

That's right. Then what? Said uncle Joe. Then the student said, I'm going to amass my fortune, raise my family, and eventually I'm going to retire and buy a home out in the country. Live it up.

Ah, sounds very inviting. Said uncle Joe. Then what are you going to do? Huh?

Well, I don't know. Uncle Joe, by that time I'm going to be pretty old. I suppose I'm going to die. And surely you will. Said his uncle Joe. And then what?

You see this young college student had only thought about the next few years, hadn't really thought about the end of the line and especially the end of the line. Meeting the Lord himself and what he will say. And why is this important? Because until we start believing the reality of the other side, that's when we'll start behaving differently on this side. The reason we don't behave differently on this side is because we don't believe the reality of that side. When we do, then we will. The day of the Lord will come. Now I'm not looking for the day of the Lord. I'm looking for the Lord of the day. I, as a believer, I'm looking for the return of the Lord to take us away, to take us into glory by death or by rapture.

It's my blessed hope, the Bible says. And there is a word I'd like to resurrect. We used to say it in the early Jesus movement days. It's a Bible word. It's the word Maranatha.

It's the word that early Christians would say to each other, sort of as a code word. They would say, Hallelujah, Maranatha. Maranatha means the Lord is coming soon. So shall we try that to one another? Maranatha, you ought to be saying that to one another. The Lord is coming.

That's Skip Hyten with a message from the series Rock Solid. Right now, we want to share about an exciting opportunity you have to take your knowledge of God's word even deeper. Going to church is a great way to learn about God, but what if you want to learn more?

What if you want to go deeper? Calvary College offers classes in Biblical studies, classes like Theopoetics, Life and Lessons of C.S. Lewis. Learn more about God and the Bible on your schedule. Take evening classes on campus or online. An education from Calvary College will impact your spiritual life for the rest of your life. Apply now at CalvaryABQ.college.

That's CalvaryABQ.college. Did you know that God's word works in you as you read and study it daily? The Bible is powerful, and it changes lives. And today, you can help keep these biblically solid teachings on the air with your generous gift of support. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give today. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you. Join us again tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shows you the difference between living for this world and living for the better one ahead. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.