2 Peter 3:5–7

2 Peter 3:5 shows the force of the Greek word thelō: "this they are willingly ignorant of," or "this is hidden from them through their own wilfulness."

A person might be ignorant and be forgiven, but the grave sin of the present moment is this, that the scoffer is "willingly ignorant."

Peter says: you like to believe that there was no flood, and I will tell you why. If you admit the flood, you admit the judgment of God upon wickedness. And if you admit that God judged wickedness once, then it is more than probable He will judge a second time. So men will not have it: their will is in question again.

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 what God says.

Here we have inspired Scripture to set every doubt at rest for those that fear God. Scripture states the tremendous fact in a few words: the flood destroyed all guilty humanity. The account is free of local legend and human embellishment. The moral fact stands in all its solemnity.

They speak of "the beginning of the creation", so they admit there was a beginning. But their wills are set against God, and they try to explain creation by natural causes. The believer knows that the heavens "existed long ago" by the word of God, and that the earth emerged from the waters to become the home of man.

Some apply this passage only to the earth's first make-up, others to the flood. Plainly the apostle looks at each in turn. The All-wise God had built the earth that way in case of need. When the human race turned away from Him, that drastic remedy was called for, and He used it to destroy the old world. Could unbelief be more suicidal than to assume such a thing is impossible?

When God began to form the world, what already existed was one vast mass of waters, called "the deep": "darkness was over the face of the deep," and "the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." The earth did stand by God's power out of the water. Whatever store of waters lay below broke out over the earth, and more came down on it from above.

First, by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in with a judgment that brought the flood on the world of the ungodly, so that the world of that time perished. Third, by His word God keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, against the day when the ungodly men of this present generation are judged.

To a mind obsessed with evolution the flood of the past, as recorded in Genesis, and the personal coming of Christ in the future are equally unbelievable. They stay wilfully ignorant of the one, and they mock and deny the other. For over nineteen centuries scoffers have scoffed. Only during the last half century have they scoffed on these grounds. But the scoffers are to scoff on these grounds in the last days.

The Apostle Peter, speaking of the world before the flood, calls it "the world that then existed" (2 Peter 3:6). That world has passed away forever. But he goes straight on to speak of "the heavens and earth that now exist." Here he means the world that started after the flood.

"The skins will be destroyed" (Luke 5:37), that is, the new wine bursts the old skins, and they are made useless for the purpose they were made for. Again, "the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished" (2 Peter 3:6). The world was certainly not wiped out of existence.

Here we see that God destroyed the early population of the earth by the vast store of water He provided above and below. It overwhelmed man and beast, apart from those He preserved in the ark with Noah at His command. Genesis 7:11 points to this huge overflow: "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows (or floodgates) of the heavens were opened."

The flood was universal — absolutely universal. That seems to me to be clearly meant and intended, because it destroyed the world that then existed. God puts an end to the whole system of the world. His judgment of the earth and everything on it was as complete as His coming judgment by fire will be. Everything in the whole order and system of the world that had life perished.

They reason from what they see, and draw conclusions about what will be. Faith turns away from what is seen and stands on the word of God. It knows such arguments are completely false. Things have not continued as they were from the beginning of creation. God has stepped in with striking judgments. The flood is the outstanding witness that God has broken into the ordinary course of nature.

There is hardly a country on earth without traditions, more or less true, of that solemn dealing with the whole inhabited earth. God kept Noah and his family safe in an ark, along with the animals that would otherwise have died in the waters. So people are without excuse. What else but the fact itself could produce a tradition found among all the races of mankind, north, south, east and west?

Ah! says Peter, you like to believe there was no flood, and I will tell you why. If you admit the flood, you admit the judgment of God on wickedness. And if you admit the judgment of God on wickedness once, then He will most likely judge a second time. So men will not have it. Their will is in question again. They are deliberately ignorant of the solemn fact that the world has once been judged. The world came up out of the waters by the word of God, and at His bidding those same waters swallowed it up, and everything on it, apart from those in the ark He provided.

First, by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in with a judgment that brought the flood on the world of the ungodly, so that the world that then existed perished. Third, by His word He keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, until the day He judges the ungodly men of this generation.

(V. 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.

First, that by His word God created the heavens and the earth. Second, by His word God stepped in to judge. He brought the flood on the ungodly world, and that world perished. Third, by His word God keeps the present heavens and earth for fire, until the day when He judges the ungodly men of this present generation.

They ask, "Where is the promise of His coming?" They claim that all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. It is the argument of "uniformity," pushed all the way. They ignore God's judgment by the flood... This is hidden from them, says the apostle. It is truly hidden, so they can be sincere in holding it. Yet it is the cunning of their own wills that hides it — and those wills so often deceive the sharpest minds.

God has but one way of purifying this sin-stained earth, and it is by fire... So that, on the mightiest monuments of man's skill and ingenuity, faith sees the words "Reserved to fire" written in letters that cannot be erased.

This world is already under judgment, and it will soon vanish, for the present heavens and earth are "stored up for fire"... Why? The answer is this: the first creation will share the doom of the first man.

The world, as we look at it, in spite of all reforms and all outward improvements, is not such that anyone can easily believe a holy God will go on with it forever.

These two expressions must clearly mean the same thing — they both refer to the same period... "The day of judgment," then, is the period when God destroys the heavens and the earth by fire.

Peter, and he alone, takes the day of the Lord to cover the whole of the thousand-year reign, and even what comes just before it and just after it... All these vast events fall within the day of the Lord — not within the thousand years, but within that day.

The law, Christ's coming, and the gospel preached to every creature have made man's responsibility far greater. So his sin in rejecting the truth is far greater too... Such measureless guilt — rejecting the only, perfectly righteous One and His propitiation — will have to face God's extreme punishment by fire.

This judgment was a sample of what is yet to come on a much greater scale in "the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."