"Seeing" the New Jerusalem

I will conclude our study in 2 Peter 3 in this article. We have covered the first 8 verses of this chapter. To briefly review, I noted that the “scoffers” were contemporaneous with Peter*s congregations. This point meant that they were living in the “last days.” To meet their mockery, Peter alludes to Noah*s “days” and the “heavens which were” (implying that they are no more), and the land.” He calls this the “then world” and it also “perished” with water.

From this we gathered that the Bible uses cosmological terms, but does not always define them in the way modern day astronomers would. The “heavens which were” in Noah*s day, literally speaking, are the same “heavens” you and I see everyday, yet Peter says they perished. Biblical language is replete with this type of “heaven/land” decreation language, which we noted. Therefore, the “present heavens and land” to which Peter refers need not imply the cosmological universe any more than it did in his reference to Noah*s day.

We contended, with scholarly and biblical evidence, that the “heavens and the Land” refer to the “temple and the Land of Israel,” the temple being a “copy of the true one: heaven itself” (Hebrews 9:24). The temple/ tabernacle was truly a copy of “the heavens” on “the Land” of Israel and was approaching judgment very soon in Peter*s day.

The tabernacle of Moses was a type of what God did in reality through Christ: bring God*s true dwelling on the Land in “Spirit and in Truth” rather than “on this mountain.” Jesus explained this explicitly in John 4:21-24, and we see this occurring in Revelation 21. It is this “new heavens/new earth” that Peter is waiting for, “wherein righteousness dwells.” More on this shortly.

The “promise” of Christ*s return was not delayed as some men counted delay, but was right on schedule. It had been 30 years since the Apostles started preaching the coming of the Lord, and Peter is reassuring his congregations that 30 years to God is nothing since a day to Him is a “1,000 years.” God keeps His promises, and speaks to men in ways that men naturally understand time, and if He said, “this generation,” then Peter can write, “you are a chosen generation” in his first epistle to them.

Briefly, in that first epistle, Peter wrote, “the salvation that is ready to be revealed in these last times” (1:5). This “salvation” was the “salvation of your souls” (1:9). The prophets tried to “find out the time” and “spoke of the things that have now come to you” (1:12). Jesus was “revealed in these last times” (1:20).

Peter then quotes Psalm 118:22 in 2:7 where “the stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.” Peter had heard his Lord quote this very verse in Matthew 21:42. In that passage Jesus tells the Parable of the Tenants, where the landowner rents the vineyard to murderous tenants who kill several servants, then kill the owner*s son. Jesus asked to the effect, “what should the landowner do to those tenants?” The Pharisees and Scribes in Jerusalem answered, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end!”

Then Jesus quotes the verse we have in I Peter 2:7 and says, “I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce fruit!” The passage concludes, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus, they knew he was talking about them.”

When was this event going to happen? AD 70. This is what Peter is waiting for. It was what all the faithful Jews were waiting for: The great tribulation and parousia of the Lord. You can see, then, the scoffers mocking this message saying, “where is this parousia?” “Where is this divine judgment on the Land and Temple?”

Three more verses in 1 Peter helps set up 2 Peter 3. In 4:7 Peter wrote, “the end of all things is at hand.” In 4:5 the Lord is “ready to judge the living and the dead.” How far was the extent of Jewish antagonism and persecution to other faithful Jews? Peter wrote, “...your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferIngs” (5:9).

Folks, Peter was writing this to first century believers who were suffering from their own kind just as Christ had predicted: Mothers against daughters, fathers against sons, brothers against brothers. We must pay attention to the original context of the outworking of Israel*s covenant unto the the end of the age in AD 70 when God showed the whole world that He is no longer operating according to the old covenant, but through a “new and living way” in Christ Jesus!

Yet, some have contended that the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel was merely a blip in history, a meaningless fact as it relates to the world-wide spread of the Gospel. History, however, records that the event was world-wide in effect since Jews were living in every part of the world at that time.

We can now resume our discussion with verse 9b. “He is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to eternal life.” This verse has been, again, subjected to a great deal of exegesis. Historically, this verse has furnished the “excuse” for the “delay” of the day of the Lord. I made mention last issue that “delay” assumes that something was originally to occur, but was “delayed.”

The second century church used this very verse to stretch out what they thought had not yet occurred (this is thoroughly covered in my book, Misplaced Hope). The reason God has not returned yet, and why the earth had not burned, is because God wants to save more people. Therefore, what was originally to happen in that generation of the apostles, in fact, did not, happen, but was “delayed,” and has been delayed now for 2,000 years.

Basically, what this view is saying in its underlying theological motive is that God was going to come soon, but simply changed his mind and put off what he originally had in mind to do! This is how far people will go in order to save their traditions of men. This whole arrangement, of course, is based on the erroneous idea that God is going to blow the earth up in a final blaze of glory. Since that did not happen, then we must search for a solution to account for the “nearness” language. None but the preterist view does justice to the Scriptures, taking the Bible at its very words.

A second objection to the our view on this passage is that the “you,” “any,” and “all” refer to all the elect souls of all time. Therefore, if what we are saying is true, then there is no more “repentance” to be given after AD 70. Simply put, if the preterist view is correct, then God has stopped saving people after AD 70.

My reply is that this implicitly assumes that Peter is talking about “all the elect souls of all time* which does not necessarily have to be the case. God has elected souls in Christ in every generation, and there is nothing here that suggests that this particular “chosen generation” (genos eklekton in the Greek - I Peter 2:8) is the last generation forever. The word “chosen” there is where we get the noun “elect.” They were an “elect generation.”

Further, this same Peter addresses people from many regions on the Day of Pentecost (compare 1 Peter 1:1 with Acts 2:9, 10) which are from the same audience he is addressing in this letter. In that Pentecost address, Peter said, “Ye men of Israel” (Acts 2:22), and “save yourselves from this perverse generation” (2:40). This is the same generation Peter is writing to in this epistle.

And he is telling them that God is not willing that any of them should perish, but that all of them come to repentance before the Great Day of the Lord. There is no one who believes that Peter*s appeal to that generation to “save” themselves meant that this was the “last generation” forever in Acts 2:40, so why suppose it in 2 Peter 3:9?

The great Puritan Reformer John Owen (1684), who interpreted these verses the same way we do, stated, “Now who are these of whom the apostle speaks, to whom he writes?” Owen then describes them as the “elect” of those “last days” (John Owen, The Death of the Death in the Death of Christ, Banner of Truth Trust, 1999. p. 236).

Owen uses Matthew 24:31 as a cross reference, “and he will send his angels and... .gather all his elect.” Marcellus J. Kik, John Lightfoot, Jay E. Adams, Kenneth Gentry, Andrew Sandlin, C. Jonathin Seraiah, Richard Pratt, David Chilton, Gary North, Rousas Rushdoony, Lorraine Boettner, Adam Clarke, and a long list of several other respectable scholars who are not full-preterists all interpret the verse in Matthew 24:31 as having occurred in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. But none of them suggest that since God gathered together “all the elect” of that time, then God is done in the “elect-gathering” business after AD 70.

Further, they all take 24:22 as having been fulfilled as well, “if those days had not been cut short, then no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” not “delayed.”

This dispenses, then, of the notion that Peter is speaking of every single elect member of Christ*s Body. Rather, he is addressing his own generation, and the elect of that generation. God was not willing that any of them should perish, but have everlasting life, and this “salvation” was “ready to be revealed” in those “last times” of Israel*s demise in that “perverse generation.” God saved every last Israelite he intended to save right up to the “end.”

Keep in mind that Jews were suffering throughout the entire world, and many perished without having accepted Jesus Messiah, but God was not willing that the “elect strangers of the Diaspora” (2 Peter 1:1) to whom Peter addressed, perish, but come to repentance and be gathered into Christ. Since God was not willing, it is safe to say that none of them perished, but that all of them repented. All, that is, that God intended to save.

Peter continues, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief...” (3:9a). Rather than review the occurrence of this term in the New Testament, I will focus briefly on Ezekiel. First, a single quote from Paul will suffice: “Understanding the present time (Paul wrote Romans in the late 50*s). The hour has come for you to wake up....because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the Day is almost here” (Romans 13:11, 12). Can Paul get anymore clearer? What “day” of “salvation” was “nearer” to Paul? Some have said, “well, everyday is getting closer to the second coming.” If that*s what Paul meant, then it hardly means anything. Anyone at anytime could say that.

There is no ethical impetus in what is so obviously true. But, if a looming judgment was known to occur very, very soon, then people take account of their actions in a different manner. If, for example, I knew that a certain world-wide judgment was definitely coming in my days, then I would live my life in such a way that would be different from my everyday life. I would sale all that I have, I would encourage those “not to marry” for the “time is short” (1 Corinthians 7:29).

I would not build a business in order for it to be successful financially, but would utilise evey aspect of being towards the “time” of the impending, certain judgment to come in my own generation. I certainly would not be having church board meetings over the type of carpet to buy for our new million dollar church building, or new multi-million dollar television station, if I knew that all of this was going to end for certain in my own day!

In Ezekiel 7, it is agreed among scholars that this prophet is writing about the final sack of the Temple in 589 B.C. by the Babylonian Kingdom. There, Ezekiel wrote, “The end has come” several times. “The time has come,” “the day is near,” “Their silver and gold will not save them in the day of of the Lord*s wrath.”

All throughout the chapter, Ezekiel, writing just years before all of this happened, uses the same language of destruction as Peter. The Preterist interpretation is fully justified in comparing the two periods of Ezekiel and Peter since both use the same language to refer to the same event: the destruction of Israel.

Peter then continues to describe the “destruction of the heavens” and “the elemènts.” They will “burn” and “melt like wax.” The “land” (earth) will be “laid bare” and the “works in it.”

The issue here is whether we take this language “literally” in the sense of atoms, protons and neutrons,or “literally” in the sense of Israel*s demise. The “elements” (stoicheion in Greek) is used by Paul four times (Galatians 4:3, 9; Colossians 2:8, 20). The phrase he used was “the elements of the world.” All these passages are in context of the Jewish principles of law-observance.

Paul is not using this phrase in the since of atoms and protons. These are the “principles of the world” rather than the “principles of Christ.” To be fair, stoicheion is defined as that, but not in Paul, as any commentator would show. No one disagrees with this. But, when we come to Peter, the word is defined differently as the atomic structure of the material universe.

However, when Peter implied the “earth and heavens which existed” in 3:5, did hydrogen, oxygen and boron “disappear” when God judged the “then world” of Noah? I ask again, why assume that to be the case in the “present heavens and Land reserved for fire* (3:7)? Paul wrote that these “principles of the world” are a “shadow of the things which are about to come, but the Body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:17). Note that.

The “shadow” was the “elements of the world” of Judaic ritualism, but the reality is “about to come” in the future, thus eliminating the shadow. When was this “about to” happen? What event would forever settle the matter as to which order God had chosen? Which event was “about to” happen which forever settled the question of the legitimacy of Temple worship, new moon days, Sabbaths circumcision, genealogies, religious festivals, and Jewish calenders (see Colossians 2:16)?

If Christ is the fulfillment of the Jewish shadows and types of the Law, and if circumcision was now spiritual rather than fleshly, and if the worship of God was to be made known as being “in Spirit and in truth” as opposed to “in flesh and shadow of truth,” then what event, for all believing Jews and Gentiles would forever settle the matter as to which world God would accept? What was “near” to signal the “day” of God*s “judgment” in this matter between “shadow” and “reality?” Do I even have to spell it out? I will: Israel*s fleshly demise in AD 70!

After that event, the Gospel was unrestrained by the outward, natural man of the Law, but entirely renewed in the Body of Christ. All Christians live in this reality whether they acknowledge it or not. Preterists are just calling their attention to it. We are calling their attention to what Peter was so anxiously looking forward to in his own generation.

We have pointed out that in the Old Testament, the “land laid bare” and the “heavens dissolving” is used several times in the prophets to refer to the destruction of national entities, or of Israel*s demise in 589 BC.

One last prophet will prove this. Zephaniah, writing around the 620*s, stated, “the day of the Lord is near” (1:7), and “it is near and coming quickly!” (1:14). What is this “day?” It is when God will “stretch my hand against Judah and ainst all who live in Jerusalem“ (1:4). It is a “day of wrath” (1:15). A “day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness” (1:15).

He then wrote, “In the fire of His jealousy the whole world will be consumed, for He will make a sudden end of all who live on the Land (earth)” (1:18). Then Zephariiah wrote, “Gather together of shameful nation, (Israel) before the appointed time arrives...seek the Lord” (2:1-3). Every commentator I sought that has evangelical merit refer these verses to Jerusalem*s demise in 589 BC. If Zephaniah was writing in the 620*s, then from 589 we get only 31-38 years! A generation!

The “day of the Lord” was truly only some thirty years away from his prophecy, and he said that “the whole face of the Land would be wiped free” (1:2). Yet, even when the same imagery is used in 2 Peter 3, facing the same calamity, we are asked to believe that Peter, who refers constantly to the prophets of the Old Testament, is completely unconcerned with his own people*s demise so near to his day. That he would utilize the same language that the prophets used for the destruction of Jerusalem in 589 BC, but have a completely different meaning than they did!

For Preterists, Jesus settled the matter. “When you, Peter, John, James, Matthew, see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know, Peter, that these be the days of vengeance in fulfillment of all that has been written” (Luke 21:20-22). Do you think that Peter might have something to say about such a terrible catastrophe concerning his land, his nation, his people, and his religion? Or is he concerned with 21st century Iraq and warning his “dear friends” about the Pope, Saddam Hussein, and credit cards?

This, then, ends our concern with Peter*s reference to the destruction of the “heavens and the Land.” Peter is not talking about the universe, nor is he teaching that God is going to blow the globe up. The Bible nowhere teaches this. It has been proven through sober exegesis, utilizing all the Bible and Biblical language, that Peter is concerned with the “suffering” his own people were about to go through, and he alludes to the same language the “prophets” used when they faced the same situation as he did.

“But in keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness” (3:13). That was the next event. Messiah would come, be cut off, raised from the dead, and rule in the heavenlies in the last days of Israel*s outward covenant. Those last days would be marked by scoffers, judgment and suffering for the elect. But, Israel*s “kingdom” would be “taken away” from them in that “generation,” and the whole world would know it.

She fell in AD 70 in a “time, times, and half a time” rebellion from 66 - 70 AD (3 and one half years), then the “end” would come. The next event was “the new heavens and the new earth” wherein God dispenses salvation without any old covenant fetters whatsoever, to all nations, to all peoples. This was the “salvation” to come, and this was the “eternal life” to be “brought” in that “burning by fire” of the Old Covenant “heavens and the Land.” No longer does God judge a man according to the Law, but judges him “according to the Law of Christ.”

We no longer even ask whether or not we “must be circumcised. .in order to be saved” (Acts 15:5). But, in that verse, that is exactly what the believing Judaizers demanded. This situation, from transition from the old to the “new order” (Hebrews 9:10) lasted a “generation.” Therefore, the Christian message is not a mutilation of Peter*s expectation of physical demise for the entire globe. This is to misinterpret Peter. Rather, the message of the Gospel is that message found in the “new heavens and the new earth” of Revelation 21:6, “To him that is thirsty, I will give him drink without cost.”

Notice that Peter is following the same chronological order of John*s Revelation. Peter was “looking for” and “hastening” the coming new heavens/earth. Why was he looking for it? Because he knew that it was to come in his own days. That*s simple to understand. Yet, I have been told by Bible believing Christians that “cannot see” the new heavens and the new earth! I ask them if they can “see” the “righteousness of Christ” imputed to them, or the fact that they have been “born again,” or the fact that they are “seated with Christ.” Can you “see” these things with the eyes of the flesh?

Rather, in using the language that centers on Jesus Christ and the cross, the “righteousness” that Peter is referring to is that “righteousness in Christ,” wherein the believer, “dwelling” with God, being made one with the Father through Christ, is counted as worthy to enter into the kingdom. This is what John “sees” in Revelation 21 and 22. What began at the cross in Jerusalem, ended at the fiery destruction of the holy of holies in Jerusalem in AD 70.

The “good things” were “already” breaking through the last days of the old covenant “age” (Hebrews 9:11). However, the author of that book also looked forward to a “world to come” (2:5). This was to appear “in a very, very little while* (10:37). While the Temple in Jerusalem stood, the “way into the most holy place was not yet (mepo - Greek) manifested. This is a parable for the present time” (9:8, 9). The present time for that author, before AD 70, was that while the temple stood, the way into the heavenly holy of holies was not fully available for the believer to enter.

In Revelation 6:9, the souls are under the altar. At the end of the destruction of the “Great City, where are Lord was crucified (Jerusalem)” (Revelation 11:8), John saw that “God*s temple was opened and within His temple was seen the ark of the covenant” which is in the most holy place (11:19). The fullness of salvation was not available until the old wine skins, the old order dissolved. Hebrews makes this point again, “and by calling this one ‘new,* he made the first one obsolete, and what is obsolete and aging will soon vanish” (8:13).

The obsoletion of the Old Covenant made possible the consummation of the New, and this is directly tied to Jerusalem*s demise, the capital of the Old Covenant world. Again, Hebrews 9:10 states that the temple in Jerusalem will stand “until the time of reformation,” or “new order.” F.F. Bruce*s comments are exact: “The old covenant was now to give way to the new, the shadow to the substance, the outward, earthly copy to the inward heavenly reality” (NICNT: Hebrews, 1967).

John saw a “new Jerusalem” which implies an “old Jerusalem.” Was God left temple-less? Was the most holy place of the old not replaced with a “better” holy place in the heavenlies? When the old holy place was destroyed, did God open a “way” into a “new” holy place? Where is this new place? It*s in the “new Jerusalem!” But, we have Christians today saying that they cannot “see” the New Jerusalem! This is still trying to put old wine into new wineskins. It is wanting a fleshly tabernacle, visible to the flesh, for a spiritual reality.

In short, an immature faith that debases the spiritual reality in favor of an unfulfilled physical fantasy land. What Peter was longing for was a “new order” where the “old order” was burned with fire, and where it was no longer obligatory for him, as a Jew, to maintain the outward ceremonies. In the new heavens/earth, God*s people were forever, entirely set free from what for 1500 years under Moses had “burdened” them under a “yoke” that enslaved them to sin, death, and condemnation.

This was Peter*s song: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” If you can*t “see” your total freedom in Christ, then I suggest prayer, because settling for anything else impairs seeing the glory of God fully in Christ, Jesus. He came, he saw, he conquered.

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