The day of the Lord will come and when it hits, it will destroy suddenly with stealth like a thief and before it's over, the whole universe will be out of existence as we know it and an entire new heaven and new earth wherein dwells only righteousness and the ungodly will be consigned to eternal hell forever. He's coming and he is on schedule. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today, John MacArthur continues his compelling, even startling look into the future in a series he calls Where in the World is History Headed? Of course, people have been predicting global destruction for years, for example, scientists, politicians, and filmmakers who anticipate a worldwide catastrophe. One thing's for sure though, the world as you know it will be destroyed someday and the crucial question is, are you prepared for what's ahead?
John is going to help you answer that question today. So now follow along as John begins the lesson. Let's open our Bibles together to 2 Peter chapter 3. As Christians, it is obvious to all of us that we anticipate by way of the revelation of Scripture the return of Jesus Christ. But it is more, I think, than just a part of our theology. It is also a part of the anticipation of our hearts. As believers, we long for the day when the Lord Jesus will return to take His own to be with Him and then to judge the sinners of the world to establish His Kingdom and to bring in eternal righteousness. To all of those who truly name the name of Jesus Christ, such a hope is central to their faith. But to the mockers and the scoffers who attack Christianity, there is continual ridicule about such a doctrine, such an anticipation. We find that such ridicule is the subject of Peter's discussion here in this chapter.
You will remember, I'm sure, verse 3, the mockers who come with their mocking and in verse 4 they say, where is the promise of His coming? One of the major attacks of false teachers and scoffers and mockers through the centuries has been on the doctrine of the return of Jesus Christ. For just a moment, suppose they're right. Suppose that Jesus is not coming back. Suppose that Jesus never actually rose from the dead and therefore could not come back for He's dead.
Think of the implications. Wrong would never be made right. Injustice in this world would never be replaced by fairness and equity. Suffering would never be rewarded in this world. The curse on this world would never be removed.
Paradise lost but never regained. And the hope of the human heart for a better life would be but a pipe dream. The longing for a better world would be an illusion. If this is all there is, a deteriorating wicked world growing worse and worse and there is no change to be anticipated, no alteration, no transformation, no better world, better life, no end to pain, no end to sickness, no end to death, no end to disappointment. If all of that is true, then sin rules, Satan wins, and the universe continues on the path to its own destruction.
And for what? What kind of cruel joke is this life and this world? The question really is, could we bear such a belief? Could we commit soul suicide and believe that there is no real resolution?
Nothing will ever be made right. Can we really buy into the mockers viewpoint without destroying all hope and making nonsense out of human existence? The false teachers in Peter's day had reached the point in their heresies where they were outright attackers of the Second Coming. Among the things that they taught that were heresy, the pinnacle seems to be a denial of the return of Jesus Christ. It probably involved the denial of His physical, literal, bodily resurrection, but for sure they denied that He would ever come back. That denial topped off all the other denials which were part and parcel of their heresy.
The denial of the Second Coming apparently culminated their distorted doctrine and denial of Scripture. So since Peter was writing this second epistle to deal with false teachers, he in chapter 3 then must deal with this, the culmination of their false teaching. Remember in chapter 1, Peter gave us some safeguards against false teachers, safeguards like living holy lives under the authority of the Word of God, safeguards like being sure you're genuinely saved and knowing your spiritual condition. And then in chapter 2, he described for us the false teachers in great detail so they would be recognizable to us. And now in chapter 3, he defends the faith against their most important error, that is an attack on the return of Jesus Christ.
As we come into chapter 3, we begin to deal with it immediately. Remember now, Peter opened this chapter by focusing on the debate in verses 1 through 9, the debate between the mockers and those who teach the truth. And then he makes a statement of affirmation about the return of Christ. And then in verses 11 to 18, he closes the chapter by talking about the practical implications that the return of Christ causes. So the first nine verses show the debate between the mockers and those who speak the truth. Verse 10 affirms the truth and then verses 11 to 18 delineate its implications. In verses 1 and following, we start out with the arguments of the scoffers against the Second Coming. In verse 3, the mockers mock. In verse 4, they say, Where is the promise of His coming?
And they have a number of arguments that they use. On the other side, the first argument of the saints is the argument from Scripture, verses 1 and 2. He says to them, I want you to remember, verse 2, the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets. That's the Old Testament. And the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles, that's the New Testament. Secondly is the argument from history, verse 5. He says the scoffers willingly forget that God has judged and He goes from verse 5 to 7 to speak of the judgment of water that came upon the world. Thirdly, the argument from eternity in verse 8, because the Lord has not already come, does not mean He won't come. It does not mean He's late because with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day, God does not operate on a timetable like ours, He operates on eternal terms, eternal basis.
And then, fourthly, the argument from the character of God, the argument from the character of God, that is found in verse 9. They say, Where is He? Where is He? He promised He was coming.
Where is He? And Peter in the culmination of his argument says this, verse 9, 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. God by nature is compassionate.
God by nature is gracious, merciful, loving, kind, forgiving. God is Savior. There are other people who look at this verse and say, Well, if God doesn't wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance, then nobody will perish and everybody will come to repentance. We call these people universalists and they think everybody's going to be saved.
But if everybody's going to be saved, then all of the teaching in the Bible about the day of the Lord is a lie because it says when the day of the Lord comes, sinners are going to be destroyed. So I submit to you then that I believe in the sovereign election of God. I believe in the predestination of believers to eternal life. But I also believe that those who go to hell go because they have made a choice and are responsible for their own rejection and unrepentant heart.
God has to harmonize those things, I can't. But I know God's heart is broken when sinners refuse to repent. Now there's a paradox here, obviously, because God does finally yield to His holy justice. There is a point at which His mercy, grace, compassion, forbearance and patience end.
That's true in every individual life. God may be repentant and give a man 60 years but at year 60 it ends and he dies without repenting, without believing in Christ. God may give a woman 70 years but at 70 it ends. God may give a civilization so many years and then in a sweeping holocaust wipe out a large portion of its population.
And God will give the world so much time, but as it says in Genesis 6, my spirit will not always strive with man and after 120 years of preaching, the Flood came and it was over. Finally and ultimately the justice, the holy justice of God will ultimately consign unbelieving men and women to hell. He decrees that though it be not the desire of His heart and so He does it because men refuse what is offered them.
Scripture will say it. Jude 4, He will appoint the wicked for the day of judgment, even ungodly men who are foreordained to this condemnation. The ungodly who persist in ungodliness and unrepentance are foreordained to be damned.
Repentance is the only way to salvation and faith in Jesus Christ, turning from sin to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. And Romans 2, 4, God is patient that sinners may be penitent. God is patient that sinners may be penitent. So says Peter, four arguments...four arguments for the coming of Christ. The argument from Scripture says He's coming.
The argument from history says He's judged in the past, there's precedent. The argument from eternity says if it seems like a long time, remember it is to you but not to Him. And the argument from character says He's coming and the reason He waits so long is because He is so patient to give time for sinners to repent, for it is not His desire, though ultimately it is His decree that ungodly be damned. On the basis of those four arguments, Peter then affirms the coming of Christ in verse 10. Look at verse 10. This is the result of those arguments, the affirmation statement. "'But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its works will be burned up.'"
What a statement. The day of the Lord will come. The day of the Lord, remember please, is a technical term for the culmination, the judgment of God that comes to end this age, to end this world as we know it. The Old Testament prophets saw it as a day of unequal darkness and damnation, a day when the Lord would act in a climactic way to vindicate His name, to destroy His enemies, to reveal His glory and to establish His kingdom. And whether you look at Isaiah chapter 2 or chapter 13, whether you look at Ezekiel chapter 13 or chapter 30, whether you look at Joel chapter 1, chapter 2, Amos chapter 5, whether you look in that single chapter of Obadiah verse 15, Zephaniah chapter 1, Zechariah chapter 14, Malachi chapter 4, wherever you look and you see the unfolding of the final day of the Lord, you see it as a time of judgment. Some of the prophets indicate that it will have some preliminary signs and so they write of those.
Some write about what it will be like when it hits and how it will continue and some speak of what happens after it's over. But the prophets all see it as a day of judgment and doom. The New Testament writers the same. Whenever the New Testament writers speak of that term, the day of the Lord, it is a fearful term. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 2, you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
And while people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come upon them suddenly. It is a time of devastation and destruction. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 2, the day of the Lord is going to come and again it is associated here with evil. It is preceded by an apostasy, a man of lawlessness, the Antichrist, the son of perdition or destruction. Earlier in that same epistle, the first chapter, it describes the event itself when the Lord Jesus comes from heaven, verse 7 of chapter 1, with mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus and they will pay the penalty of eternal destruction. Always a time of judgment.
When Jesus spoke of it in Matthew 24, the emphasis was on the devastation as well as the gathering together of the elect. So Peter says it will come, this technical term describing the day of judgment. And it will come, he says, like a thief.
What does he mean by that? It will be a surprise arrival, a surprise break-in, if you will, sudden, unexpected, disastrous to the unprepared. And the verb, by the way, has the force of a present tense. It could be read this way, the day of the Lord will have arrived like a thief. We don't know when. No one knows the day or the hour.
It's not for us to know that. But all generations live in the sense that it could come at any time. And so Peter says it's coming, it's inevitable. Then he describes its character. Look at verse 10, in which when that day comes, the heavens will pass away with a roar.
This is such a dramatic picture. It reminds me, and perhaps you, of our Lord's teaching back in Matthew 24. It says heaven and earth will pass away. Those are the words of Jesus. Heaven and earth will pass away. In Luke 21, 33, the same thing is said.
In Mark 13, 31, the same thing is said. We find in the book of Revelation more detail about that. Chapter 6 of Revelation, verse 14, the sky was split apart like a scroll when it was rolled up and every mountain and island were moved out of their places, the whole earth and sky in upheaval. The stars of the sky, verse 13, fell to the ground like a fig tree cast its unripe fruits when shaken by a great wind.
The sun becomes black as sackcloth made of hair and the moon becomes like blood. The heavens just completely begin to disintegrate. What does He mean by the heavens? The physical, invisible universe, the vaulted expanse, the sky with all the things that are in it. In the primitive Hebrew, they didn't appear to have a concept or even a word for universe. They simply spoke of heavens. But here it means the whole universe will pass away.
Please note it. It is not by man and it is not by the natural course of things. It isn't going to be a man-made holocaust because somebody drops an A-bomb. And it isn't going to be some kind of environmental disaster because we've over polluted the ozone with too much hair spray and deodorant. It isn't going to be that. It's going to be the intervention of God. God is going to destroy it. The whole universe is going to go.
Some people have tried to assign this event to the end of the Tribulation before the Millennial Kingdom. That's not possible because you have the destruction of the entire universe. In fact, in Isaiah 34, it says, all the hosts of heaven will wear away. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll. All their hosts will also wither away as a leaf withers from the vine. Can you imagine if you unroll a scroll and let go of it, it just rolls back up.
The whole universe just rolls up. It does it with a roar. Interesting word. The word is rhoidsedon.
It's an onomatopoeic word, another one of those words that sounds like its meaning. It means with a whizzing, with a whistling, or with a crackling sound of objects being consumed by flames, the noise will be absolutely deafening. The roar of a fire that is unlike anything you can ever imagine as the whole of the universe goes up in some crackling, whizzing, furious flame.
We are clear on that because of what Peter has already told us. Verse 7, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for that final fire on the end day of judgment. God is going to bring a fire that literally burns up the whole universe. And then he says, and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat. The element stoicheia literally means the things in a row, like letters in a row or numbers in a row, basic things. Applied to the material world, it means the elements, the basic elements that make up chemical composure of the universe, the components into which matter is ultimately divisible even further down into atomic structure, down to the very elements that make up the universe, the atoms, the neutrons, the protons, the electrons. They're going to be dissolved, to be literally luodestroyed.
How? With intense heat, furious heat, beyond anything we could ever imagine. We talked about that in our earlier study of verse 7, how that even now the core of the earth is a ball of fire, as well as all the balls of fire that exist in the sky, stars and suns. This whole universe once went up in water, if you can say it that way, and it's going to go up in flames in the future. He says in verse 10, and the earth and its works will be burned up. The heaven's going to go and so is the earth.
The whole of the physical, natural earth as we know it with its whole ecosystem and social system will be consumed. Now this is an amazing thing. This is something that is beyond description. Somehow the Lord protects His sheep through that...through that whole thing. Those who belong to Him, through that devastating, final, ultimate holocaust and takes us into the new heavens and the new earth.
Now some of you are saying, well now wait a minute. Doesn't the day of the Lord come at the end of the tribulation? Yes. But aren't you describing something that happens at the end of the Millennium before the new heavens and the new earth? Yes.
Because it says in verse 13, we're looking for a new heavens and a new earth. But you say, wait a minute, I know a little prophecy. Isn't there a thousand years between those? Yes. You say, well then does the day of the Lord last for a thousand years?
Not really. The day of the Lord has a component that occurs at the end of the tribulation when Jesus comes at the end of the battle of Armageddon and consumes the wicked. And the day of the Lord has another component at the end of the Millennial Kingdom. But don't be troubled by that because verse 8 explains it. With the Lord, one day is what?
A thousand years. And the day of the Lord is just one day with Him. Though from a human viewpoint there's a thousand year interval between phase 1 and phase 2, with Him it's one day of the Lord...one day of the Lord. And in that final moment, the whole solar system and the great galaxies will be abolished.
All the elements which make up the physical world will be dissolved by heat and utterly melt away. It is an astonishing picture that really is the final act of God to destroy the remaining ungodly who have accumulated during the Millennial Kingdom. He destroys those on the earth at the coming of Christ at the end of the tribulation time, in the thousand year kingdom people will be born who will reject Christ. An innumerable number of people will fight against God. Satan will be released at the end of the thousand years and lead a rebellion against the Lord and God will come in ultimate final judgment for the last time and destroy the whole universe and set up a new heaven and a new earth. And we'll see more about that as we go on. The wrathful voice of God is going to come in the day of the Lord.
It's inevitable. The mockers may mock. They're wrong and they may argue...they may argue from the viewpoint of emotion and feeling. They may argue from the viewpoint of morality, not wanting any accountability, wanting to live the way they want with no compunctions and no restraints and no one to answer to.
And they might argue foolishly, blindly, willfully from some revised vision of history, but their arguments are foolish. The day of the Lord will come...will come. And when it hits, it will destroy suddenly with stealth like a thief and before it's over, the whole universe will be out of existence as we know it and an entire new heaven and new earth wherein dwells only righteousness and the ungodly men and demons will be consigned to eternal hell forever.
He's coming and He is on schedule. Next time, we're going to find out the implications of this in our lives. Father, thank You that You've given us such clear warning. What a gracious God You are, not only to be patient but to be so clear in Your revelation that we can understand and know You've made Your Word available. We thank You for Your passion, Your compassion, Your grace, Your mercy, Your loving kindness. We thank You that You do not desire, that men perish.
You proved that You loved men when You gave Your Son to redeem them. Well, Lord, we know at the same time while Your patience lingers, there will be a day when holy justice falls for Your grace has its limit. And we pray that not a person hearing this message will feel the crush of that moment of judgment and its eternal pain because all will have come to Christ, turning from sin to embrace Him as Savior and Lord, in whose name we pray.
Amen. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today he continued his study here on Grace to You called Where in the World is History Headed? It's a fascinating look at the second coming of Christ. Now, the Bible is filled with prophecies about Christ's return and His triumph on earth. One of those amazing glimpses into the future is found in Daniel chapter 9. As Daniel anticipated the restoration of Israel, the Lord revealed not only His plans for that nation, but for the righteous rule of Jesus Christ over the whole world. To dig into Daniel's compelling prophecy, let me remind you about John MacArthur's brand new book called Christ Triumphs Over Sin and Death.
Verse by verse, it unpacks the amazing details in Daniel 9 that foretold the first coming of the Messiah and that foretell His future return. If studying Old Testament prophecy intimidates you, if you've thought that prophecy is too hard to understand, Christ's triumphs over sin and death can help put away those concerns and make this portion of scripture clear. And keep in mind, too, that through May 9th you can get Christ's Triumphs Over Sin and Death and nearly every item we sell at a significant discount, so place your order today. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or purchase Christ's Triumphs Over Sin and Death when you visit our website, gty.org. Again, during our sale, the price for Christ's Triumphs Over Sin and Death is $11.25, and shipping is still free. To order Christ's Triumphs Over Sin and Death, or maybe a MacArthur Study Bible, at a significant discount off our normal price, call 800-55-GRACE or go online to gty.org.
The sale ends May 9th, so order soon. Also, keep in mind, you can download John's current audio study, Where in the World is History Headed, in MP3 and transcript format, and all of that is available free of charge, along with 3,600 other sermons by John, at gty.org. In fact, there are thousands of free Bible study tools available at our website.
Take advantage of everything that's available there at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. How should anticipating the return of Christ change how you live today? Consider that when John returns with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time on Tomorrow's Grace to You.
