There are 260 chapters in the New Testament. 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. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. When the world seems to be falling apart, when economies struggle and wars rage and persecution of Christians grows, do you ever wonder, where is the justice? When will all the wrongs be made right?
If you've ever had those thoughts, you're not alone. In fact, even the Apostle Peter faced those questions, and he knew exactly how to answer them. For Peter, there was always reason for hope, reason to eagerly anticipate the future no matter what the present circumstances are. Today, John MacArthur shows you why Peter could have such hope. John is continuing his study titled, Where in the World is History Headed?
But, John, before you continue this study, a straightforward question for you. What are the practical benefits right now, both for individual Christians and for local churches? The practical benefits of knowing what the Bible says about the future. Well, obviously, the first thing that comes to my mind in understanding what the Bible says about the future is that we know God wins.
That's the first thing. If we didn't have any revelation about the future, this would inspire all kinds of doubt and questions, and that would lead to fear, and there's no need for that. We know how it all ends. You know, I often think about that when, you know, you start listening to the environmentalists who are worried about what we're doing to the planet, and I want to say to them, if you think we're messing up the planet, wait till you see what Jesus does to it. This is a disposable planet. That's right, it is a disposable planet. It's a lot younger than people think. It's not millions of years old at all. It's only thousands of years old, and it's going to come to an end. In fact, basically, the Holy Spirit has revealed through Peter that the elements, that's atoms, will melt with fervent heat, and the whole universe as we know it will literally implode. It'll be uncreated by the power of God, go out of existence, and be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth. How important is it to know that?
It's critical. We don't need to try to preserve the earth forever. It is a disposable planet with a very brief life of a few thousand years to act as a theater for redemption. And in the end, God will redeem his people.
He will establish a new heaven and a new earth. Not only that in general, but the specific elements and events leading up to the end of this universe are outlined for us in Scripture. So important and so wonderful that God has revealed that to us.
Yes, it is. Thank you, David. Friend, an unwavering trust in what God has said about the future can bring great comfort to you today. So with that in mind, here again is John to help answer the question, Where in the world is history headed? Turn in your Bible with me, if you will, to 2 Peter chapter 3 to establish again in our minds this wonderful text I would like to read for you, verses 1 through 9. 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 1, This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. Know this, first of all, 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?
Wherever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water through which the world at that time was destroyed being flooded with water. But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.
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. 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.
That is our hope, that is our desire, that is our ultimate goal and glory. We noted last time that 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. We noted that when He comes, He comes to gather His own to Himself, He comes to destroy the wicked, both men and demons, and He comes to set up His kingdom and ultimately to bring in eternal righteousness. That event, really a 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.
Satan works very diligently to deny future judgment. We noted last time in some detail that the church has always been plagued then by false teachers who deny Christ's return and deny judgment to come. As Peter wrote this epistle, you 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 against the onslaught of their false teaching in this regard. Now last time, we looked at their argument, the argument of the scoffers against the second coming.
And I only want to just sum it up very briefly. They articulate their argument in verse 4 when they say, 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. Now the text reveals that their argument follows three tracks, three forms. First, we said, is the argument from ridicule. In verse 3 it says, 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 that capitalizes on emotional disappointment. Then there's the argument from morality. The underlying and compelling argument in their false theology is indicated at the end of verse 3 when it says they really are following after their own lusts. You see, the reason they deny the second coming is not because they can disprove it scripturally. The reason they deny the future judgment that Christ will bring is not because they have some profound insight into theology. The reason they deny the second coming and the reason they deny the judgment of Christ is because they love their sin and they want no ultimate accountability. They want an eschatology that fits their immorality, to put it simply. The return of Christ means judgment on sinners. The return of Christ then means accountability as to how you live your life.
They don't want that accountability. They don't want any judgment to come. So if you love your lust, then you want no judgment so you develop an eschatology that fits your immorality. The third argument into which we went with some great detail as the other two is the argument from uniformity, verse 4. They say, forever 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 no 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. So you have here an emotional argument, you have a moral argument, and then you have an intellectual argument. And this is their revisionist history intellectual argument. Of course, to do this, they have to reject the Bible, which they do. They did then.
They do now. Biblical theologians who deny the second coming of Jesus Christ do so from within the church by basically denying the Bible. They deny what Jesus said about His return. They deny what Paul and Peter said about His return and what everybody else in the Scripture said about His return. In fact, they tell us that those verses aren't true. They're not inspired by God.
They have to be demythologized. They're mythical. We have to get them out of the Bible. So there is the threefold argument of the scoffers who deny the coming of Christ. Now let's look at the argument of the saints for the second coming. We've seen the scoffers arguing against it. Now let's see the argument of the saints for the second coming.
These are marvelous, just absolutely marvelous, as Peter responds to the argument track and line of the scoffers. 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. Now Peter's going to give us several arguments, argument number one. Argument number one is the argument from Scripture, the argument from Scripture. For this we look at verses 1 and 2. Now this particular section, verses 1 and 2, is really the opening of the chapter, but it fits perfectly into Peter's polemical scheme.
Polemical means argument. And so fitting into his argument beautifully is verse 1 and 2. Look at verse 1. As he starts to get into the subject, he says, this is now, beloved, the second letter I'm writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.
Just a few little notes about how that begins. This is now...this is now the second letter means that there's a very small period of time between the first and the second letter. That phrase seems to indicate the brief time between letter number one and letter number two. 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. When he says the second letter I'm writing to you, that's not too hard to figure out and yet you would be absolutely astounded if I were to bring in here about ten commentaries and show you about two hundred pages in which scholars attempt to discover what is the first letter. Now I am here to tell you folks, you don't even have to be Phi Beta Kappa to figure out when he writes 2 Peter and talks about the first letter he wrote, that must be 1 Peter.
But I am amazed at how much effort scholars go to try to show that he didn't mean 1 Peter at all. He says, look, this letter and the first letter I wrote you have the same purpose. I want to stir up.
What does that mean? Awaken, alert. I want to stir up your sincere minds. I want to alert you. Alert you to what?
Well, to the potential of the invasion of false doctrine and false teachers and satanic lies. In order to alert you and awaken you, he says, I have to stir up your sincere mind by way of reminder. There are some things you already know.
You've heard them in the past, but you need a new rehearsing. You need a refreshing. Now would you notice the little phrase, your sincere mind, for just a moment?
It's a very good commendation. It 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.
Plato, by the way, used the same phrase for pure reason. Peter is saying, look, you're pure minded. As you're genuine believers, you have a pure faculty for spiritual discernment. And I want to stir up that redeemed mind, that pure faculty for spiritual discernment. By the way, that's 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 points 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, I want to stir your sincere mind up so that you can meet that attack head on. So he says, I do this by way of reminder.
Now of what does he want to remind them? What is the first safeguard, verse 2? Here's what you need to remember. You should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets.
Stop right there. That is a reference, beloved, to the Old Testament. You need to go back and be refreshed in the Old Testament.
The Holy Spirit-inspired Old Testament had much to say about final judgment. When scoffers come along, and by the way, they were having some effect, or Peter wouldn't have bothered with this, they were having some effect. And he is saying, look, you can't buy their argument from ridicule.
You certainly don't buy their argument from morality. You don't want to buy their argument from uniformity, their new kind of history that looks back and says God never invaded history, it's always been going along the same. You don't need to buy those things and what will help you not to buy into that, first of all, is to go back and rehearse in your mind the Old Testament, which he designates as the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets.
Go back to chapter 1 for a moment. 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. By the way, the reason he uses holy is very simple. He is contrasting these prophets with false prophets. And just like the first category of prophets, the false ones needed an adjective, so do the true ones and he chooses the adjective holy. The false are unholy, the true are holy.
And it's true. 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. I wish we had the time to do a full study of the Old Testament and all that it says about final judgment, but we don't.
Let me just give you a little flavor. 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. Now that's typical of Old Testament passages.
If you were to look into Isaiah's prophecy and you were to examine chapter 13, you would read in verse 10, 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. And over in Isaiah chapter 24, we find another similar passage, chapter 24, beginning at verse 19, 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. But look at some of the minor prophets, just ever so briefly. Look at Micah.
Don't bother to look for it if you don't know where it is. I'll read it to you. 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, next to the New Testament, the last book of the Old. For behold, the day is coming, chapter 4 says, burning like a furnace and all the arrogant and every evil doer 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. Where do we go then?
To argue for the second coming. Where do we go then to argue for the judgment of God at the end? We go first of all to the Scripture and first of all in the Scripture to the Old Testament. Go to Zephaniah chapter 1. Go to Zephaniah chapter 3. It's everywhere in the Old Testament.
But that's not all. Go back now to 2 Peter chapter 3 and see what else Peter says. Remember not only the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets, but remember also the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles.
What's that? 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. Your apostles, those who by virtue of God's marvelous grace belong to you because they gave you the truth. Speaking of Christ's chosen plus Paul, those who wrote the New Testament. So he says, study the apostles who wrote the commandments of Christ, which means the New Testament. Now we don't even have time to go into all that the New Testament says about the second coming and judgment. Suffice it to give you this information.
You ready for this? There are 27 books in the New Testament. Twenty-three of the 27 refer to the Lord's return explicitly.
Twenty-three 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, in fact, is it implied. Galatians 1, 4, it 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 in our eternal glory. There are 260 chapters in the New Testament, 260.
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 to light the hidden things of darkness, to judge, to reign, to destroy. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, answering the all important question, where in the world is history headed? That's the title of his study here on Grace to You. Now, friend, if studying along with John's Bible teaching has strengthened your walk with Christ, will you let us know? Your letters are a real encouragement to John and to our staff, so send us a note today when you contact us. You can email your story to Letters at GTY.org, or you can write to us at Grace to You, P.O.
Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. And remember, we have thousands of free Bible study tools available at our website GTY.org. To deepen your love for God and His Word, or to help you finally understand a difficult passage that has challenged you, you are sure to find a sermon, a blog article, or a devotional that will meet your spiritual need. And if you don't know where to start, check out GraceStream. That's a continuous loop of John MacArthur's sermons. It starts in Matthew and goes all the way through Revelation, verse by verse, and then it starts all over. So whether you have 15 minutes or a couple of hours, jump into GraceStream and start listening.
All of that and more is available at GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, and then join us tomorrow when John continues his study, Where in the World is History Headed? with another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
