2 Peter 3:3-7

A further characteristic of the false teachers was the denial of the Second Advent (their coming is again spoken of as in the future; cf. 2 Peter 2:1 and 2 Peter 3:17). Their scepticism is based, partly, on the non-fulfilment of the primitive hope of the immediacy of the Parousia, and partly on a belief in the rigid immutability of the world process. The first generation of Christians (the fathers which can hardly be taken to mean the OT saints; there is here an indication of the late date of the epistle) has already passed away and all things remain as they had been from the beginning. But their reasoning is false. They wilfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were made and the earth from water and by means of water, and that by the same means they were afterwards destroyed. So by the word of God the heavens that now are and the earth will be destroyed by fire. There is no parallel in Jude to the teaching of 2 P. with reference to the Parousia; this is the author's main addition to Jude, and probably represents his main purpose in writing.

2 Peter 3:6. the world that then was: the universe, the first heavens and earth. The tradition that the heavens as well as the earth were destroyed at the Flood is found in Enoch (8:33- 5), and is a development of the earlier tradition of Gen.

2 Peter 3:7. stored up for fire: treasured up for destruction by fire. The belief that the universe would be destroyed by fire (cf. 2 Peter 3:10 ff.) was widely prevalent in the second century (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, iv. 11, 79).