But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up [2 Pet. 3:10].
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.” There is some argument as to whether this takes place at the coming of Christ to establish His kingdom or at the end of the millennial kingdom. I am convinced that the Day of the Lord is an extended period of time which opens with the Tribulation, followed by the thousand-year reign of Christ, the brief rebellion led by Satan, and the judgment of the Great White Throne. Then, as we find in the Book of Revelation, the new heavens and the new earth come into view.
“As a thief in the night,” the same expression which Paul uses in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, indicates that it will begin unexpectedly.
“In the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise.” The Greek word used here for “noise” is rhoizēdon. It is the word used for the swish of an arrow, the rush of wings, the splash of water, the hiss of a serpent. Have you ever listened to an atom bomb go off? Do you remember a number of years ago when they were experimenting with the bombs and we could see and hear them on television? This is the very word and the only word I know that could describe such a noise.
“And the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” You see, matter is not eternal as was once believed; you can get rid of matter—that is, it can be converted into energy. Peter speaks here of “the elements,” the little building blocks of the universe, the stoicheia as it is in the Greek. Stoicheion is a better word than our word atom which comes from a Greek word meaning something you cannot cut, because we have found that an atom can be cut and it can be taken apart.
“Melt” employs one of the simplest Greek words, the verb luō, which simply means “to untie or to unloose.” By untying the atom, man has been able to produce a little bomb that can do tremendous wonders. Today men are trying to release that energy because you and I live in a world that is running out of resources. When God stocked this earth, He put plenty of oil in it, and He put plenty of groceries here. It was like a great supermarket. Men came and prostituted this earth. They have polluted the earth and are beginning to use up all that God had put in the pantry and all that He had put in the filling station. But there is a tremendous potential of energy in the little atom, and I tell you, when God destroys this earth someday, it is going to be a tremendous thing. I think that it will be just like a great atomic explosion, and the earth will go into nothing. I have always felt that the Lord will probably turn the little atoms wrong side out and use the other side of them for a while. When He does that, man will never be able to untie them again.
“The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” This will certainly include the tremendous amount of water that is on the earth—it will be burned up. We know today that water is made up of two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, and both of them are gases that are inflammable and can be very explosive. Firemen tell us that there are certain kinds of fire which, when water is put on them, are only helped along by it. Firefighters have to use certain kinds of chemicals to put out such fires. “The works that are therein shall be burned up.”
Peter is saying that God will judge in the future just as He has in the past. At the beginning of this chapter, Peter says that the scoffers will say, “All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (v. 4). The scoffer’s great fallacy is in not knowing the past, yet it is the evolutionist who makes so much of the fact that there was a great catastrophe in the past. The great mountains out here in the West, the High Sierras, were thrown up at that time by some great convulsion of nature. That happened sometime in the past, and it was a judgment of God, if you please.
The Day of the Lord will include judgment also. The “day of the Lord” is a familiar term in Scripture. The prophets used it, the Lord Jesus used it, and many of the New Testament writers used it. It is a technical term. The Day of the Lord begins in darkness, as the Old Testament prophets said—it begins with tribulation. It ends with this great atomic explosion, this great judgment of the earth by its being dissolved by fire. Between these two great events is the period of the seven years of tribulation, the coming of Christ to the earth to establish His kingdom, the millennial kingdom, the brief release of Satan and the rebellion of those who rally to him, Satan’s final confinement, and the Great White Throne judgment of the lost. Then after the judgment of the earth, which Peter is describing, the new heaven and the new earth come into view."
McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 5:749-750
:shocked: We’re gonna need a bigger boat. :burnlib:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord [1 Thess. 4:17].
"Again, “caught up” is the Greek harpazō, meaning “to grasp hastily, snatch up, to lift, transport, or rapture.” It is going to be a very orderly procedure. The dead will rise first. Here comes Stephen out of the grave. It may be that he will lead the procession since he was the first martyr. Then there will be the apostles and all those millions who have laid down their lives for Jesus. They will just keep coming from right down through the centuries. Finally, if we are alive at that time, we will bring up the rear of the parade. We will be way down at the tail end of it. Most of the church has already gone in through the doorway of death."
McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 5:399
