2 Peter 3:8

8. Our apostle now returns to the all-important caution in regard to time. It is on this point that the sceptical scoffers will fix. Remember that God’s hours are ages. Note on Acts 1:7.

One day… a thousand years In the prophetic predictions of the second advent the Spirit speaks by the arithmetic of God, in which the terms soon, quickly, humanly indicating a few days, divinely allow a few ages. Psalms 90:0.

And now the question may well arise, Why has inspiration thus used phrases of such nearness to designate an event which was to be, as near two thousand years’ experience has proved, so distant? Or, to express the thought in higher terms, Why has a divine arithmetic been thus used to express such a distance to human minds? Our reply would be this: The Spirit’s purpose is, to preserve in our minds an impressive conception of its nearness in spite of its distance. The divine intention is, to prevent our banishing it from our thoughts on account of its far futurity. In its momentousness to us it is nigh at hand, and time is no rightful factor in our calculations. Nay, the very greatness of its distance, far millenniums, perhaps, hence, demands that thought and language should bring it near. Sensible time is very relative. To us in the intervening spirit-world millenniums may pass with inconceivable rapidity. There ever is to us but a step, as it were, to the judgment-day. Note on Matthew 25:6. Hence, Scripture uniformly points us, with warning, not to the day of death, but to the resurrection and the judgment-seat of Christ.