2 Peter 3:10

10. Will come With an emphatic will. For what we may call the Apocalypse of St. Paul, we look to 1Co 15:22-57 ; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10; and 2 Thessalonians 2:3-8. And so we find the Apocalypse of St. Peter in this chapter, 5-13. But it was reserved for St. John to furnish the great Apocalypse of the New Testament. All three supply special points, but all three agree in the great sublime whole.

As a thief With a sudden surprise to the sceptic scoffers. It will catch them in the midst of their scoffs, and rob them of their argument.

The heavens shall pass away Note that the passing away is not of the earth, but of the atmospheric heavens of our earth. The visible heavens, as seen to the terrene spectator, are seen to be swept away. They vanish as a scroll. Compare descriptions of the same scene in Revelation 6:12-17; Revelation 20:11-15; Matthew 25:31-46.

With a great noise The Greek word ροιζηδον expresses the whiz or friction of the air or other substance, as by a bird’s wing or other sudden motion. It seems intended to describe the sound effected by a most violent collision of the atmospheric forces, or perhaps of the rushing earth and the air.

The elements Of which the material earth is composed. We have no reason to suppose that the solar system will be involved in the dissolution of our earth.

Melt with fervent heat Greek, the elements about-being-burned will be fused. The particles composing the material earth will be separated by the heat, and be ready for reconstruction into new and more perfect forms.

Earth… and… works… therein As an effect of the divided elements the surface- earth, and all its contents, are consumed and forever disappear. The theatre of human history goes down into non-existence. In the matter of consumption of the earth by physical fire, St. Paul and St. Peter agree; but John is silent. The “lake of fire” of St. John does not seem to belong to the same category, but is analogous to Gehenna, the figurative image of divine wrath exerted in penalty.

The expectation of the destruction of the world by a diluvium ignis deluge of fire analogous to the diluvium aquae deluge of water was a traditional idea among the ancients, both poets and philosophers, especially the Stoics. We give passages from Wetstein. The philosopher Seneca says: “At that time the foam of the sea, released from laws, was borne on without restraint. By what cause, do you inquire? By the same cause by which the conflagration will take place when to God it seems good to establish a better order of things, and to close the old. Water and fire rule terrene things: from the former comes origination; from the latter, destruction.”

Cicero says: “Our philosophers suppose that at last the whole world will take fire, when, the moisture being consumed, neither the earth can be nourished nor the air circulate, so that nothing will be left but fire; from which, again, under the animating power of God, a renovation of the earth will take place, and the same fair order will be reproduced.”

Eusebius says: “It is the opinion of the Stoic philosophers, that all substance should go into fire, as a seed, and from it again should spring the same organization as before.”

Lenormant, the eminent French archaeologist and historian, (Contemporary Review, Nov. 1879,) says: “The result, then, of this long review authorizes us to affirm the story of the deluge to be a universal tradition among all the branches of the human race, with one exception, however, of the black. Now a recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and before the dispersion of the families from which the principal races were to spring.”