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2 Peter 3:1-4 (KJV) This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: 2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: 3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

What is interesting about Peter’s second letter to the Church is that he waits until the third and final chapter to explain why he wrote the letter. Now we know the letter was not written exclusively by Peter. We were told in the first chapter of this letter:

2 Peter 1:21 (KJV) For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The Scripture is written by God. As Peter writes he writes guided by our God. This third chapter is specifically addressed to Christians. The Lord saved the best for the last! As this letter ends the focus is to jog our memories – to..

I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance

The word translated “PURE” is the Greek εἰλικρινής eilikrinḗs, (pronounced i-lik-ree-nace’), which means “pure, sincere, unsullied when held up to the light”. In ancient times unscrupulous pottery salesmen would seal minor cracks in their products by the use of wax. You could test the pot by filling it with water and, of course, it would not leak. But in time the wax would melt, and the pot would leak … long after the crooked salesman was gone. How did you make sure this didn’t happen, that you weren’t cheated.

Hold the pot up to the sunlight.

If it was cracked or damaged in any way the sun would shine through the pot. Farmers do the same thing with eggs before they sell them. Hold it up to the light.

The true Christian is the person who can be
held up to the Son’s light – S-O-N.

 If you have been born again you are not perfect – none of us are – but you are a work in progress. You are not deceitful. You are not the devil’s. You are not orphaned. You are adopted by God. You are forgiven. You are loved. You are the Master’s possession, and one day you will be like Jesus. And since you are God’s and God is yours Jesus will come and take you to Himself one day as His possession. This is your final destination -to be with the Lord forever!

God wants to STIR YOU UP, to remind you that He is coming for You! This world is not your home – you’re just passing through. The unbeliever mocks the coming of Christ, saying …

Where is the promise of his coming?

Did Jesus really say that He was coming again?

Did Jesus really say that He was coming again? It’s been over 2000 years since our Lord ascended into Heaven. Perhaps this is just a fantasy. Where is the promise of His coming?

1 Christian, you forever belong to God. Christ purchased you with His Blood. He paid for you on Calvary. You are not your own. You are His, and He is yours! If God tarries you will one day go to Him Who purchased you. The Scripture says:

2 Corinthians 5:6-9 (KJV) Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 9 Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.

While on this earth the Lord is with me, for He has said:

“I will never leave thee nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

While on this earth “the Lord is my Helper”.

He is with me, and with you if you are Blood bought. You and I belong to Jesus. To belong to Jesus is the greatest truth you can grasp. If you belong to yourself then life is good and bad, up and down, terrible and happy. But if you belong to Jesus and grasp this fact then you can happily declare with the Apostle:

Philippians 1:21-23 (KJV) For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23 For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:

Though death separates us from THIS PRESENT life it does not separate us from our Lord and Savior.

Romans 8:35 (KJV) Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? …

Romans 8:38-39 (KJV) For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Physical death does not separate us from our Savior.

We are bought at a terrible price (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23), the Blood of Christ was shed for you.

So no, death has no hold on you. Our Christ has conquered death.

Oh death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
(1 Corinthians 15:55).

1 Corinthians 15:57 (KJV) But thanks be to God, {Who}
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Christians, as part of His Church you forever belong to God. The rock on which the Church was built was the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:16-18). The word CHRIST means MESSIAH. Jesus is the Messiah who will save His Church. Jesus is coming soon to Rapture His Church – to take us from this earth. The Apostle spoke of this in:

1 Corinthians 15:51-53 (KJV) Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

1 Thessalonians 4:14-18 (KJV) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 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. 18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

HERE is the promise of His coming! Jesus has promised to return again for His Church, to save us out of the great Tribulation. The Great Tribulation is called “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7). Our Lord will come and take His Church from the earth prior to this event. Because Christ has taken the wrath of God on Himself for us, we shall not have to go through the Great Tribulation.

1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 (KJV) For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.

He has promised to save them that are His. He saves us fully. We shall have glorified bodies like His body (see 1 John 3:2). Jesus shall come in the air and receive us unto Himself – then the Tribulation will begin. For seven years the world shall go through horrors under the reign of the anti-christ. But he shall reign for but a season.

3 Christians, Israel Belongs To Our Lord. Jesus Will Come To Both Redeem And Save His Israel. Though many Israelites were brought into the Church since Christ ascended unto God, Israel as a nation rejected Christ as Messiah. But once His Church was formed Jesus promised to return to the earth for His Israel. Before Jesus ascended into Heaven the disciples asked Him:

Acts 1:6 (KJV) …. Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?

They knew that Jesus had taught He was coming again for Israel. Jesus is the virgin born Son of God (Isaiah 7:14). Jesus is the heir to the Throne of David, with every right to rule both Israel and the world He created (Isaiah 9:6-7). So the disciples asked “Jesus, now that You are resurrected, are you not going to restore again the Kingdom to Israel? Will You not now rule and reign?” Jesus replied:

Acts 1:7-9 (KJV)… It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. 8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. 9 And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.

Jesus told His young Church leaders to go out and share His Gospel of salvation to whosoever will. To tell others that Christ came “to seek and save the lost” (1 Timothy 1:15; Luke 19:10).

We are in a period of Grace right now where the Gospel is to go forth into all the world. Jesus Christ is coming in the clouds for His Church, and coming to this earth to saved His Israel. He is coming to judge this world.

Matthew 16:26-27 (KJV) For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

The Disciples understood that Jesus was coming to rule and reign over this earth. On the Mount of Olives just prior to His crucifixion the disciples asked Jesus:

Matthew 24:3 (KJV) … what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

How would we know that the end of the age is near? What will we see just prior to His coming? There Will Be False Messiahs And False Prophets.

Matthew 24:5 (KJV) For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

Matthew 24:11-12 (KJV) And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. 12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

The anti-christ shall stand in the Holy of Holies of the rebuilt Temple:

Matthew 24:15-16 (KJV)15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) 16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains.

There are many other signs mentioned by our Lord in Matthew 24. But I want to simply point out that Jesus promised He was returning for His Israel:

Matthew 24:27 (KJV) For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Matthew 24:36 (KJV) But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

We do not know when Jesus will return – no one knows but the Father in Heaven. But He is returning. He can come at any time.

The Passing Of Time Does Not Negate The Word Of God

The mockers do not believe that Jesus will come again because, they say:

for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

Our Lord Jesus used Noah and his ark
to illustrate His second coming.

Matthew 24:37-39 (KJV) But as the days of {Noah} were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that {Noah} entered into the ark, 39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

People think that God has forgotten that He will return and judge this world. They think because of the passing of time that maybe God has forgotten, or has dementia. When Noah started building the Ark he preached the coming flood. 120 years later God had Noah and his family get on the Ark and the entry was sealed – there was no time left. Peter refers to this when he writes:

2 Peter 3:5-8 (KJV) For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The fact that God tarrys before He sends His Son is not that He has forgotten. No, just as it was with Noah, so it is with us.

Time does not matter to the Promise of God!

For our sakes God created the world in six literal 24 hour days – but God Himself is outside of time. A day with God is as if it were 1000 years, or 1000 years as if a day. God tarries.

God tarries. He waits.

God waited for 120 years before He sent the flood in Noah’s day.

God tarries.

God waited for over 400 years before judging Pharaoh and Egypt.

God tarries. He waits.

Jonah preached “Yet 30 days and Nineveh will be destroyed” if you do not repent.

God tarries.

Righteous Lot is sent to Sodom and Gomorrah, but they refuse to repent. God sends angels to that city, and the crowd attempts to rape them.

God tarries. He waits.

Evil abounds in America – babies are murdered in the name of convenience. The blood of the innocent cries out from the ground, from the land fills, from the sewers. Our government uses our tax money to fund this evil.

But God tarries. He waits.

Drug abuse grows. Let us legalize marijuana. Eat, drink, and be merry.

God tarries.

Comedians mock God. Comedian George Carlin mocked God before his death, saying to a laughing crowd:

“There is no God … in fact, I’m gonna put it this way. If there is a God, may He strike this audience dead! See? Nothing happened. Nothing happened? Everybody’s okay? All right, tell you what, I’ll raise the stakes a little bit. If there is a God, may He strike ME dead. See? Nothing happened …”

God tarries. He waits. Why does He wait? Why does He not strike? Because of Calvary. Because of His great love for us all. The Bible says:

2 Peter 3:9 (KJV) The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Perhaps you know you are a sinner. You have heard God’s pronouncement:

Romans 3:23-25 (KJV) For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

God tarries. He waits for you. But He will not wait forever. None of us have the promise of tomorrow – but we have the promise of eternity if we run to the waiting arms of Jesus. Oh Beloved, run to Him. Let His nail scarred hands hold you. Trust Him. Give Him yourself. Become His possession. Get on the Ark of God’s love, for judgment is coming. Jesus is coming soon. Are you ready?

May God touch your hearts with His Word!