“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise” (II Peter 3:9)
(Henrietta C. Mears, “What the Bible is all about”,
Special edition for
The BILLY GRAHAM EVANGELISTIC ASSOCIATION)

“False teaching about Christ, which denies His Deity and power, results in false thinking. The first question it raises is about the Coming of Christ. To help the Church in this, Peter reminds them of the things Jesus had said. Men misunderstood Him and thought His return might be in that generation. Peter tells them that time is nothing with God- that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years (3:8). He will keep this promise as He has kept all of His promises, but according to His own time.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise… [He is not] willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (3:9). The last days are to be sad days, for scoffers shall make fun and say, “Ha, ha, where is the promise of Christ’s coming? As far as we can see, everything is going on just as it has from the beginning of creation. Nature goes along in the even tenor of her way. There have been no signs of any radical change.

These scoffers were evil men, but the sad truth today is that good men scoff at the promise of His Coming. They make sport of the great hope of the Church. How illogical was their reasoning about Christ’s not coming. Here they are! He had not come, hence He was not coming. Nothing different had happened, hence nothing unusual was going to happen. Because our Lord has not come yet, shall we give up hope? No, indeed. Rather, rejoice in the fact that His return comes nearer every day.

Peter reminds these skeptics that a mighty flood did drown the world once, and Christ likened His coming to the flood in Matthew 24:37, 38. No doubt Peter heard Him say it. But next time God will destroy the earth by fire. Will it be literal fire? Was the flood literal? Stored within the earth are oils and gases and fire enough to burn it up. Volcanoes are the release of these elements. Scientists now tell us we are sitting on a crust of earth only thirty miles in depth. Beneath this is a mass of molten matter. At a word, God could release a spout which would bury the earth in literal fire. The devastation caused by the atomic bomb has proved the possibility of such catastrophe. Or our earth may collide with some other heavenly body.”…

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