Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 50:199 (Jul 1893)
Article: Resurrection And Final Judgment
Author: Edmund B. Fairfield

BSac 50:199 (July 1893) p. 487

Resurrection And Final Judgment

Rev. Edmund B. Fairfield

The Third Chapter Of Second Peter

This chapter is confidently appealed to as against the doctrines set forth in these pages. But to my mind it is most decidedly otherwise; and I beg to call the reader’s attention to three things: —

1. To the fact that the events which the apostle speaks of as future are most emphatically represented as being in the near future; so that those to whom he was writing, were personally interested and concerned in them. There is a feeling of the intense in the whole style of the chapter. The air which the writer breathes is full of oxygen. No one can read the passage in the original, or in any translation, without being impressed with the urgency of it. Something should be done, and done now, and done by the very persons to whom he was writing, to get ready for events which were just at hand. It has the atmosphere of a military encampment, amid the blare of trumpets, calling to battle array, with the enemy in sight and coming on at double quick. He “stirs up” (ver. 1) their minds vigorously. His appeal is all on fire: “Seeing that all these things are about to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God.”

BSac 50:199 (July 1893) p. 488

Now, bearing in mind that the date of this writing is the year 66; that, more than thirty years before, the Master had said, “There be some of you standing here who shall not taste of death till they seethe Son of man coming in his kingdom;” remembering that Peter had heard him say this, and had also heard him say those other words of terrible import: “The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; … and then shall all the tribes of the land mourn,” adding in the same breath: “Verily, I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away till all these things shall be accomplished”—it is not strange that the soul of the apostle should be charged with the electric fire. The fulfilment was already beginning. The mourning of the tribes was even now swelling in a deep undertone, and was ready to break out into a wail such as there had not been heard since the world began; no, nor ever should be heard again.

With this understanding of it, the passage is entirely intelligible. But, on the theory that the apostle was writing of things yet two thousand years in the future, it is quite impossible to understand it. Just imagine, for a moment, that Peter is saying to his readers (or bet...