The false teachers follow three avenues then of attack, ridicule, morality and uniformity. They use those things to deny the Second Coming of Christ to judge the world.
He's not going to come. They ridicule that idea. They don't want the thought to enter their mind. It might crimp their sinful style.
And so they intellectualize, philosophize and come up with uniformitarianism. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Until 2010, people living in Haiti had not experienced a catastrophic earthquake. But all of that changed on January 12th of that year when a 7.0 magnitude quake shook Haiti's capital, killed tens of thousands of people and flattened everything from small shacks to tall government buildings. As the Haiti quake shows, just because a catastrophe hasn't happened in your lifetime doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. And today, John MacArthur shows you a catastrophe that's on the horizon, one that will be far worse than anything the world has ever experienced.
How do you prepare? How do you get ready for the end of the world? To answer those questions, here's John to continue his study, Where in the World is History Headed? Because it is true that the Second Coming has such tremendous potential for spiritual motivation in the life of the church, it is also true then that Satan works very hard to deny the Second Coming. If Satan can effectively get the church to look away from the Second Coming, or even to deny it as a reality, then he can remove a rather significant spiritual hope, spiritual motivation. Now you need to remember that Peter is writing this brief epistle in an inspired effort to assist Christians to discern false teachers and to have the theological power and the spiritual resources to overcome their influence. So Peter was facing false teachers, as we do, as the church does in every generation, and they've always been around who will deny the Second Coming and deny judgment.
So as he opens this last chapter, that is what is on his heart. The first nine verses focuses on the debate regarding the coming of Christ and future judgment. Verse 10 affirms that judgment.
Verses 11 to 18 talk about the implications of it on our conduct. So Peter takes direct aim here at a debate. First one is argument by ridicule...argument by ridicule. Verse 3, simply knowing this first, that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? The first statement I want you to notice, mockers will come with their mocking. So says Peter in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking.
By the way, he takes a strong Hebrew form, puts it into the Greek. Mockers with their mocking, a very strong form to emphasize what they do. They attempt to attack the reality of Christ's return, Christ's judgment by ridicule. It isn't an intellectual argument, it's an emotional one. It's not a strong logical argument, it is really simply intimidation of something that is ridiculed as a silly belief for weak, non-intellectual minds.
It plays on disappointment. It still works today on some who are intimidated by the so-called intellectual elite who will deny the return of Christ. But notice the second argument. They go really beyond this and this is an argument they don't want to make, but it's an argument that Peter makes for them. What is really interesting is the argument from morality.
Verse 3, the end of the verse says, these mockers will come in with their mocking, are following after their own lusts. Now friends, here's the true motive. Here is the true motive, following after is walking. This is their lifestyle. Walking means the course of conduct, the course of lifestyle. They are walking after their own epithumia.
What is that? Passion, sexual desire. Now, by the way, we've already met these false prophets and do you remember what characterized them? Go back to chapter 2, verse 2 for a moment. In chapter 2, verse 2, it says they follow sensuality, they're sensual. Verse 10, it says they indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires. Verse 13 says that they are stains and blemishes, they revel in their deceptions, they revel in the daytime. They are perverted in their conduct and they're so flagrant they do it during the day. Verse 14 says their eyes are full of adultery.
They can't look at a woman without literally seeing her as a sexual partner. They never cease from sin. Down in verse 18, it says they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality. You see, false teachers who know not the truth and know not God have nothing to restrain their flesh. And so they are brute beasts who are driven by passion. They deny, they mock the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Why? Because they want to pursue sexual sensual pleasure without accountability, without retribution, without consequence. That's the bottom line. Their mockery is built on their morality. You see, they want an eschatology that fits their conduct. All moral perversion among religious people must have a theology to permit it.
Right? So they develop a theology to permit their perversion. Listen, if you believe in the second coming and you believe the Lord is coming back and all of us are going to give an account for our lives and we're going to be rewarded on the basis of what we've done and certain things in our lives are going to be burned up and if you believe God is going to reveal the secret things of the heart, as 1 Corinthians 4 says, then John is right. Whoever has that hope in himself purifies himself, right?
Because when he comes, I want to be pure. But if I don't want to be pure, if I want to live my dissolute passionate life, then I've got to get rid of any future accountability. So I talk a lot about grace and I talk a lot about the inward kingdom, but I don't ever talk about judgment and accountability. I don't talk about God being a righteous judge who demands holiness and who chastens sin. You see, the hope of the return of Jesus Christ means we have an ultimate point of accountability for how we live.
Let me give you something you might not understand at first but think it through. I believe that liberal theology is not the product of intellect, it is the product of immorality. It is the direct child of passion. It is an effort to deny spiritual accountability. Michael Green said, "'Anthropocentric hedonism always mocks at the idea of ultimate standards and a final division between the saved and lost. For men who live in the world of the relative, the claim that the relative will be ended by the absolute is nothing short of ludicrous. For men who nourish a belief in human self-determination and perfectibility, the very idea that we are accountable and dependent is a bitter pill to swallow. No wonder they mocked.'" End quote.
They want to ignore the inexorable law of Romans 1.18, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness. This shows up nowhere more clearly than in evolution. Notable evolutionist and denier of divine creation, divine intervention and divine judgment was Aldous Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Huxley. He wrote Confessions of a Professed Atheist.
Listen to what he said, most insightful. This is Aldous Huxley, the brother of Julian. He wrote this, "'I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning, consequently assumed it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.'" The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics.
He's also concerned to prove that there's no valid reason why he should personally not do just what he wants to do. "'For myself,' writes Huxley, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously a liberation from a certain political and economic system...listen to this...and a liberation from a certain system of morality.
We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom," end quote. Evolution is not the child of science, it is the child of sexual liberation. It is not produced by people who have come to it purely from the intellectual. It is produced by people who wanted no meaning to culture, no meaning to behavior, no judgment, no accountability, no God so they could live any way they want to live. It's a moral issue, not an intellectual issue. There is the real reason for believing in atheism, evolution or liberal theology. Eliminate accountability, eliminate judgment. And if you believe in God, then God is a loving God who just sits up there and smiles at everything. You have to deny that God will judge sin if you're going to free yourself up to sin to the max, right?
Don't kid yourself for a moment. These people parading themselves around as intellectuals are not intellectuals, they are moral midgets. They want liberation for sexual freedom and they want an accommodating philosophy. So underneath their denial of the return of Christ to judge is the love of lustful passion and they want that without accountability. There's the argument from ridicule, the argument from morality.
One other one, I'm just going to touch on it. Verse 4, this is the argument from uniformity. Here's their big argument. Verse 4, now we're going to get intellectual. We've passed the ridicule and the emotional argument.
We've gone through the moral argument. Now we're coming to their best shot intellectually, okay? This is their best shot.
Verse 4, where is the promise of His coming? Ah, here comes their intellect. For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. That's their argument. Well you say, what are they saying? They're saying, Jesus will never come.
Why? Because He never has. Everything just...it's like saying, I'll never die, I never have. The false teachers are capitalizing on this revisionist history. They're rewriting history. They use the emotional argument and then they use the moral argument and now they use the philosophical intellectual argument and they become revisionist historians.
And this is what they say. Well, ever since the fathers fell asleep...what do you mean by that? Who are the fathers? Some say the fathers of the Christian faith. It could be. Could be they're talking about first generation Christians that have died.
That's pretty remote. Every time you see the term fathers, every New Testament reference to fathers elsewhere in the New Testament refers to the Old Testament patriarchs. And that's what they're really saying. They're going back...follow my thought...they're going back to Genesis and saying, look, everything's always gone along the same since the patriarchs. Go way back to the very beginning. Everything's just gone along the same.
You will note Romans 9, 5, Hebrews 1, 1 references to the fathers that definitely mean the Old Testament patriarchs. They're not arguing from a recent argument, they're arguing as far back as they can reach to show uniformity, to show immutability, nothing ever changes, continuity, gradual unchanging process. So they're really saying, ah, cataclysmic events don't happen.
They just don't happen. Things like great divine intervention and judgment, ah, that doesn't happen. Ever since the fathers fell asleep, you remember that's a New Testament term for death.
In fact, a cemetery comes from the Greek word sleeping place which was the optimistic name given to graveyards by Christians. So since the first people died, since the patriarchs died, follow this statement, verse 4, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. This is their intellectual philosophical argument. Listen to this, it is the argument of uniformitarianism or immutability.
This is the philosophy of the sinner. And what comes from it that we know most in our society? Evolution. Evolution is uniformitarian.
What does evolution say? Everything moves along inexorably at exactly the same pace. There's no God, there's no change, there's no judgment, there's no nothing. Everything goes exactly like this.
And you know what they say? They say we watched it and it went like this and so it's always gone like this and when it started here and ended there, it took this long. So if we keep going back at the same pace, the same pace, the same pace, the same pace, then everything's five billion years old. That's uniformity, uniformitarianism.
It is the philosophy of constancy. Satan invented it real early...real early. Now you know uniformitarian evolution as the brainchild of Thomas Lyle, first of all, followed by Darwin, followed by Huxley. But that came along way before those guys.
Those guys are nothing but Johnny-come-latelys. That thing was well developed right here in 2 Peter 3. What they're saying is this, the parousia is impossible. Jesus will never come. There will never be catastrophic judgment. There will never be intervention from God. There never has been. There never will be. There aren't any catastrophes. There aren't any miracles.
It's just natural process, natural process continuity. They would deny catastrophic creation in six days, even though the Bible says that. They just demythologize that. They deny that the Son stood still, which means the earth stopped revolving in Joshua 10 and nobody fell off. They would deny 2 Kings 20 that the shadow on the sundial went backwards. They would deny that the Red Sea parted. They would deny that God ever stepped in to judge. So why would we expect Him to? By the way, the longer the Lord delays His judgment, the more secure the mockers feel about their view of history. The world is very stable.
It's a closed system governed by fixed laws. And in effect they're saying, you can't believe the Bible. The words of the Bible are unreliable. Sensual sinners find their only hope for sin without fear in this false confidence. This is really important. They look at their little piece of time and they make conclusions about all of history.
From a few unchanging years, they conclude there never has been a change. Self-delusion, intellectual mind games for the sake of passion, denial of Scripture truth, evolution is the devil's tool to accommodate the immorality of sinners who will not come to God. This is devastating. If Satan can get people to believe in evolution, he has cut them off from effective evangelism.
Listen to me. One of the things you learn if you study the book of Acts is this. Whenever the Apostles evangelized those people with a Jewish background, they always used the Scripture. You can start in Acts 2, Acts 7, Acts 8, Acts 10. In Acts 2, Peter preaches out of the Scripture. In Acts 7, Stephen preaches to the Jews out of the Scripture. In Acts chapter 8, Philip finds a man in his chariot reading Isaiah and he explains the Scripture.
In chapter 10, a man named Cornelius, a God-fearing man, and Peter goes to him and he teaches him about Christ out of the Scripture. What does that Scripture refer to? What Scripture? Old Testament. Evangelism of those people who had the Scripture is always based upon the Scripture. When Paul went to the synagogue, he reasoned with them how? Out of the Scripture. But, listen carefully to this, whenever the gospel was preached to pagans who had no Scripture, evangelism was based on creation, on the God of creation.
Let me show you that just briefly. Acts 14, listen carefully to this. In Acts 14, verse 15, it says this, here is Paul, he's preaching to a bunch of pagans who think that he is Zeus and Hermes, he and Barnabas, just outright pagans, no Scripture.
This is what he says. How's he going to approach them? How do you evangelize a bunch of pagans that don't even have the Scripture? Men, verse 15, why are you doing these things?
We are also men of the same nature as you and we preach the gospel to you in order that you should turn from these vain things. Now how's he going to get to them? How's he going to approach them with the gospel? Is he going to go to the Old Testament?
No, they don't have the Old Testament. So what does he say? We speak about the living God who did what? Who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.
You see that? You always approach the pagan from the viewpoint of how can you explain creation? In chapter 17, he's on Mars Hill with a bunch of philosophers, a bunch of pagan intellectuals.
How does he approach them? Scripture? No, they don't know the Scripture.
They don't know anything about the Scripture. So down in verse 23, he says, let me tell you about the God you don't know. Here's the God you don't know, verse 24.
The God who...what?...made the world and all things in it, He is Lord of heaven and earth. Now I want to show you one other text that's fascinating to me, Revelation chapter 14, verses 6 and 7. Revelation 14, 6 and 7, listen to this. I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven and he had the eternal gospel.
Oh, what is this? An eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, not to people who had the Scripture, but to every nation, tribe and tongue and people, to the pagan world. And what does the angel preach when he preaches the eternal gospel? How does he approach the pagans? This way, fear God and give Him glory because the hour of His judgment has come and worship Him who did...what?...made the heaven and the earth and the sea and the springs of water. You always approach the pagan from the viewpoint of creation. So what do you think Satan wants to convince the world about?
Evolution because then you've got no evangelistic starting point. You've got no entree. You've got no open door.
You've got no access. If Satan can make everybody believe the lie of evolution, which I say again is not come to by intellect but by a desire for freedom to sin, then he can significantly hinder the evangelization of pagans. And believe me, dear friends, we live in a pagan nation. We have to approach our pagan society that we live in from the standpoint, look at the world around you. Doesn't it make sense that there's a God?
And I want to tell you who that God is. That's the way you evangelize pagans. But if pagans are all convinced that all of this came out of nothing, that the formula for everything is nobody times nothing equals everything, you're stuck.
There's no bridge. The false teachers follow three avenues then of attack, ridicule, morality and uniformity. They use those things to deny the second coming of Christ to judge the world.
He's not going to come. They ridicule that idea. They don't want the thought to enter their mind. It might crimp their sinful style.
And so they intellectualize, philosophize and come up with uniformitarianism. Let's bow together in prayer. Father, we thank You for this clear word of insight into the strategies of the mockers and the scoffers, the enemy of our souls.
Thank You for what Peter has given to us. And may we remember that he said, know this first of all. Understand the ploy they're using. Be aware of it.
Be alert to it so that we don't become victimized by it. We trust Your Word. We believe Your Word. We will not be intimidated by the ridicule. We will not fall victim to the liberationist lifestyle of those who want no accountability. And we will not succumb to the absolutely foolish, ridiculous logic of evolutionary uniformitarianism. Lord, we will stand by Your Word, by Your truth.
Thank You for the confidence we have in it for Christ's sake. Amen. God is Creator of all. That's the first truth you need to help unbelievers understand as you lay a foundation for giving the gospel.
Where in the world is history headed? That's the title of John MacArthur's current prophecy study here on Grace to You. And speaking of studying prophecy, I want to tell you about a new book by John. It's called Christ triumphs over sin and death. And it's the newest addition to John's series of books on great chapters of the Bible. This new book covers Daniel chapter nine, a profound portion of scripture that spells out God's future plans for his people, Israel, and shows you what those plans mean for you. If you find it hard to understand biblical prophecy, if you have doubts about what you'll face in the future, this book can help answer your questions and give you the peace that comes from knowing that God is good and He has the future well in hand. To get a copy of Christ triumphs over sin and death, a hundred pages, contact us today. The price for this brand new book is reasonable and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-grace or visit our website, gty.org.
The title again, Christ triumphs over sin and death. Order a copy online at gty.org or when you call 800-55-grace. And if you want to improve your understanding of every book, every chapter, every passage of God's word, let me encourage you to get our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible. It gives you 25,000 study notes by John MacArthur, designed not only to help you understand every verse, but also to apply its implications to your daily life.
It's an ideal gift for someone that you've been discipling. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, available in the New King James, New American Standard, English Standard, and Legacy Standard translations, call 800-55-grace or visit our website, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today and be back at the same time tomorrow as John shows you how you can be sure you're ready for the second coming of Christ. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
