2 Peter 3.1-9.
I’ve been writing about the scriptures on Jesus’s second advent,
This being the case, people want that day to be today. Right now. ’Cause they’re suffering, or ’cause current events are awful, or ’cause they’re in a hurry to live under Jesus’s direct rule. Either way, come Lord Jesus! But he hasn’t yet.
And sometimes people give up hope of him ever returning. Which was the mindset Simon Peter had to deal with in his second letter.
2 Peter 3.1-4 KWL - 1 Now this, beloved: I wrote you a second letter in which I awaken you to a purely-thought reminder—
- 2 to remember the words the holy prophets and your apostles foretold,
- commands of our Master and Savior.
- 3 Know this first: In the last days, mockers will come to mock,
- following however their own desires are going, 4 saying,
- “How’s the promise of his second coming meant to work?—since the church fathers died over it,
- same as everyone continues to die from the beginning of creation.”
See, the expectation of the first Christians was—same as now—that Jesus could return at any time. During their lifetimes, they expected. They hoped. They waited. If anyone’d told them Jesus still wouldn’t return for more than 20 centuries, I doubt they’d believe it. (Of course, if you spoke to them now, from their vantage point in paradise I’m pretty sure they have a better idea of what Jesus is up to.)
But you know how impatient humans can get. Even in the first century, they were taking crap from those naysayers who were wondering just how much time Jesus needed to put together his heavenly invasion. After all, the first generation of Christians were dying off. And didn’t Jesus say they’d live to see his return?
So part of the reason Simon wrote 2 Peter was to remind his readers of their original conviction.