The Return of Christ
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. 2 Peter 3:10
The day of Christ’s return will come and with it a fiery judgement. This is the promise Peter is re-emphasising over against false teachers who re-interpreted Jesus’ promise to return. Their argument, based on a false premise, was: Jesus said He would come back virtually immediately (the false premise). He hasn’t comeback (true premise). Therefore what He said about His return wasn’t meant to be taken literally (false conclusion because of the false premise).
Part of the error of the false teachers is constantly repeated by teachers of end-time events today. In Matthew 24 and the parallel passages in Mark 13 and Luke 21, Jesus foretells the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and what will happen at His return (Matthew 24:3). Some things have happened and some things are yet to happen. Lumping the two quite separate events together into one was what the false teachers were doing and is repeated over and over today. Jesus said the present generation would see what He foretold (Luke 21:32). The false teachers said that hadn’t happened but what Jesus had been speaking of was Jerusalem’s destruction, which did happen in 70 AD.
Peter is emphatic: God has shown extraordinary patience – partly because our sense of a “long time” is nothing to Him (3:8), and partly because the longer the gap before Christ’s return, the more souls that can come into the Kingdom (3:9). God’s patience is our opportunity.
But there will come a day when Christ returns, unexpectedly to the world, ‘like a thief.’ On that day the ‘heavens will disappear with a roar.’ ‘Heavens’ describes the spiritual sphere which is here going through cataclysmic change; ‘will disappear with a roar’ is a single word that described overpowering noise – like you would hear next to a giant waterfall or a mighty fire.
‘The elements will be destroyed by fire.’ The term ‘elements’ doesn’t mean what the ancients believed our world was made from – earth, air, fire and water. The word was used for numbers in a series or anything in a row or order. In time the word came to mean the stars, planets and galaxies. Peter is again emphasising complete change because of God’s judgement. The earth is being set free from its cursed state. The descriptive ‘destroyed’ in ‘destroyed by fire’ means ‘to loosen or undo anything that is tied or bound and so set it free from what bound it.’ Our planet will experience its long-promised release (Romans 8:20-22). And finally ‘the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.’ Everything God has made and done and everything humanity has made and done will be laid open in full view of the Judge of all the earth.
This terrifying picture, and Peter means it to be terrifying to those not walking in God’s true light, is not just what Christ’s return will look like but what it will mean. But it need hold no fear for us. When Christ returns, not only will our earth be set free from its bondage but so will we (Romans 8:18-23). This is glorious! Come Lord Jesus!
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