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2 Peter 3:5–6
“They deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.”
The scoffers built their denial of Christ’s return on the apparent stability of the natural world: Everything continues as it always has, they argued, and nothing in nature suggests that a cataclysmic divine intervention is forthcoming. Peter’s response is blunt: They are deliberately ignorant. They “overlook this fact” (2 Peter 3:5), not because the evidence is hidden but because they choose not to see it. The truth they suppress is twofold: The world was created by the word of God, and it was once destroyed by that same word.
The first point dismantles the assumption that the natural order is self-sustaining. The heavens and the earth are not eternal or self-created but were called into existence by God’s spoken command. The universe exists because God willed it into being, and it continues to exist because He sustains it moment by moment. The regularity of nature that the scoffers point to as evidence against divine intervention is actually evidence of God’s ongoing commitment to uphold the world He made. John Calvin comments that “the same Word of God, by which the heavens and earth were at first created, still keeps them in their state.”
The second point is even more devastating to the scoffers’ argument. If the world has always continued without interruption, how do they explain the flood? Peter points to the deluge in the days of Noah as proof that God has catastrophically intervened in the past. The flood was not a minor disruption but a comprehensive undoing of the created order; the waters that God had separated in Genesis 1 were unleashed again, and the world as it then existed perished.
The false teachers’ suppression of these truths mirrors the pattern that Paul describes in Romans 1:18–32. The knowledge of God is available to all through creation, but sinful humanity actively suppresses it. The scoffers knew the stories of creation and the flood, for they were part of the Scriptures they claimed to follow, but they pushed these truths aside because accepting them would mean accepting that God can and does intervene in His creation, which would mean accepting that He might do so again.
Peter’s argument applies with equal force today. The consistency of the natural world is not evidence that God is absent or inactive but evidence that He is faithful, and His faithfulness extends to His promises of judgment, which are as certain as His promises of sustaining grace.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The sunrise that we witness each morning is evidence not of a self-sustaining universe but of a faithful God who upholds all things by the power of His command. He who spoke creation into being and brought judgment through the flood has not relinquished His sovereign rule. Let us not confuse His steadfast patience with indifference.
For further study
- Genesis 7:11–24
- Psalm 33:6–9
- 1 Thessalonians 5:1–10
- Hebrews 13:8–9
The bible in a year
- Psalms 99–101
- Romans 14