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BYT-37

II Peter 3:1-8

 

God tells us in Genesis 7:11, that the most disastrous event that has ever happened on earth began. Please open there with me.

God sent an extinction level event to the Earth judging the entire human race completely given over to sin. No one on the Earth survived. No one in the Ark perished. The evidence of that Flood was left across every part of the Earth as a mute witness and warning that God cataclysmically judged sinners.

In the World that Perished in the Genesis Flood, there was NO ESCAPE FROM GOD’S WRATH. Chilling scenes come to our minds: of the rain, the volcanoes, the geysers, the smoke, the storms, the frantic rushing to ever diminishing higher ground. And then the final moments as men and beasts crowded atop the hills and were cut off from breathing by the raging waters.

 

Flood History

The Flood is an extremely well documented historic event[1] because every New Testament writer refers to the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Plus Jesus Christ referred to each of the first seven chapters of Genesis. Thus we safely conclude that every New Testament writer apparently accepted these early chapters of Genesis as historically accurate.

There have been killer quakes over the centuries killing thousands, but nothing like this. There have been deadly plagues over the years killing millions, but never has there been a time that all the inhabitants of the planet except EIGHT were annihilated.

What happened on the ground during Noah’s Flood must have been beyond description. It was not only rain that fell. The fountains of the deep must certainly describe the volcanic activity that surrounded the FLOOD.

A brief description of some of the volcanoes, or EXPLODING MOUNTAINS SINCE THE FLOOD[2] can give us a little insight into what the earth was like during those horrifying days of judgment.  In August of 1883, the island of Krakatoa in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) exploded. And even though the world remembered the resultant spectacular sunsets through the closing months of 1883, this disaster crushed the life from more than 36,000 people” [3]

 

A TERRIBLE EXPLOSION

From logbooks of sea captains historians have traced the events starting with the long night before Krakatoa’s explosion:

“Trading ships in the area were pounded by hot winds full of flying cinders and ash; that night was a fearful one, full of the blinding fall of sand and stones. The sky one second intensely black, the next a blaze of light. Monday arrived, but dawn never came. Instead, the skies stayed dark. Ash filled the air. Lightning flashed.

As Monday morning wore on, Krakatoa’s eruptions grew more intense. Beginning at 5:30 a.m., three terrible explosions shook the air, generating immense, powerful waves.

Then, at exactly 2 minutes past 10:00 a.m., the unthinkable happened. Krakatoa exploded into nothingness.

Think about the loudest sound you’ve ever heard. Multiply that sound by thousands—a sound so deafening, an explosion so terrifyingly loud, people more than 2,000 miles away recorded hearing it. Buildings 500 miles away shook.

The violent explosion blew away the volcano and most of the small island it sat upon. Six cubic miles of rock were blasted to smithereens. Clouds of gas, fire, and smoke shot up about 20 miles into the sky.

Underwater, the force of the volcano collapsing gave birth to a giant sea wave, called a tsunami. When it reached the villages and towns scattered along the coasts, it broke on shore as a powerful, devastating wall of water more than 100 feet tall.

Huddled in their cottage above the town of Ketimbang, one family described what it was like that Monday morning: “Suddenly it became pitch-dark…I felt a heavy pressure, throwing me to the floor…Then it seemed as if all the air was being sucked away and I could not breathe…the hot bite of the pumice [a light, gas-filled lava] pricked like needles.”

They survived. But 165 towns and villages were destroyed. A total of 36,417 people died from the eruption, making it one of the deadliest in recorded history. Scientists have given the Krakatoa eruption a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6, or “colossal.” Eruptions like this occur only every few hundred years.[4]

 

Devastation Beyond imagination

Multiply all the known and observed crustal paroxysms like Krakatoa, Mt. Pinatubo, or Mt. St. Helens by hundreds of thousands and a mental picture of the early phase of the Flood year will begin to emerge-“on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up” (Gen. 7:11).

Then note v. 23, it says God used the Flood to destroy all living things which were on the face of the ground, both man and cattle, creeping things and birds of the air, they were destroyed from the earth.

No one could escape the Flood because God allowed the earth’s crust to break up at the start of the Flood. Huge eruptions under the oceans for thousands of miles literally boiled the ocean and released steam into the air along with volcanic ash.

Immense tidal waves were also created. It devastated all the forests of earth. It drowned, or suffocated every land animal on earth. It killed every massive and powerful dinosaur. It destroyed every human being. And it left its footprints globally.

Remember those people that brought their lawn chairs and sat there and made a sport, mocking and scoffing at Noah? They had probably mocked and scoffed at his grandfather and his great-grandfather.

Noah’s grandfather Enoch had come as a preacher and a prophet and had preached all over about the Lord, who was coming with 10,000 saints, as it says in Jude 14 and 15, and they didn’t accept that.

Noah’s great-grandfather was Methuselah and his name meant, “When he dies, it comes.”  He was a longest-living man on this planet.  And his long life showed how long God’s grace and mercy and patience with the planet would be.  God gave the planet almost a 1,000 years to heed and they didn’t, they scoffed. We are still:

 

Living In A World Of Scoffers

Foolishness, in the biblical sense of the term, is a willful refusal to accept God’s explanation of reality.  Have you ever thought about that?

Do most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the Universe looked down and saw that the world was so evil, that He had to put a stop to it?

No, evolutionary thought is based on uniformitarianism. That means no cataclysmic invasions by God. So the notion of a great, global flood as described in the Bible as an eye witness, historical record written by the only survivor and his family is scoffed at and ignored.

God’s Word Describe the Flood:

 

Job 12:15 The waters overturned the earth.
Psalm 29:10 The Flood testified God as eternal king.
Psalm 104:6-8 Flood terminated by God carving out the ocean beds.
Isaiah 54:9 Waters of Noah went over the earth.
Mt. 24:37 The days of Noah like those when Christ comes.
Mt. 24:39 The Flood took them all away.
Luke 17:27 The Flood destroyed them all.
1 Pet. 3:20 Only eight souls saved on the ark through the Flood.
2 Pet. 2:5

 

God spared not the old world (Gr. kosmos); brought the Flood on the world of the ungodly; the “flood” (Gr. kataklusmos) applied solely to Noah’s Flood.
2 Pet. 3:6 The world that then was perished by the watery cataclysm.

 

What does the Bible say about people who don’t believe such clear history in God’s Word? We find that God warned us that we are scoffers, and they willfully choose to disbelieve the evidence God has left.

Please open to II Peter 3, as the Lord tells us what to do when you find yourself in a world that denies their Maker! Please stand with me as we read v. 1-9.

Pray

 

Trust the Word v. 1-2

Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), 2 that you 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 Savior,

 When God’s Word records an event that God says happened, you can be sure it did! The Apostles and Prophets completely trusted and affirmed God’s Word. In fact the writers God used to record His Word all said thousands of times that what they were writing was the very Scriptures or words from God. They were totally convinced that they were sharing words that were not originating with them.

 We can Trust the Word.

 

Expect the Scoffers v. 3

3 knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts,

Sin hardens human hearts. The more sin spreads, the more cultures get immersed, the harder they become to God. Just as at the end of the world, when everyone is facing extinction for their sinfulness, rather than turning to God in repentance, they will curse Him (Rev. 9:21).

 While Noah was building the ark, he was also preaching (2 Pet. 2:5), but with sin-blinded hearts people thought his preaching was as foolish as the ark he was building. They laughed at the thought of the coming flood. People who never had seen rains or floods couldn’t comprehend such judgments.

 Only when the waters were rising, and their only escape was beyond their reach did they understand that they were lost. Rejecting God’s Word led them to be swept away, hopelessly facing God’s wrath.

We can expect the scoffers.

 

Resist the lie v. 4

 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 creation.”

Satan’s Gospel is believed around the world. Satan promotes the teachings of: a geological history of uniformitarianism, a human origin of evolution, a religion of the impersonal god, a human pedigree with animal ancestry, and a life of chance.

Notice that the Scriptures are warning us that in the last days people are going to be saying ‘everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’

 Evolutionists of course tell us that the earth has been in existence for millions of years, and that life started evolving on this earth millions of years ago. Unfortunately, many Christians also hold this same belief which says things have gone on for millions of years. The technical word used in geology for this belief is ‘uniformitarianism’.

 Geologists have the idea that the processes we see operating in the present world have been going on for millions of years at essentially the same rate, and will probably go on for millions of years into the future as well. For example, the desert museum in Tucson, Arizona, not only has a display for people to see what supposedly has happened over the millions of years past, but it also has a display of what many scientists believe will happen to Arizona over the millions of years that they believe are to come!

The evolutionists, and the theistic evolutionists (those who believe in evolution but add God to the theory), use the phrase ‘the present is the key to the past’. In other words, the way to understand the past is on the basis of what is observed in the present. For instance, they say that fossils form fairly rarely in today’s world – therefore, to form vast layers of rock containing billions of fossils over most of the earth’s surface must have taken millions of years.

 The Bible claims to be the record of One (God) Who not only knows everything, but has always been there because He is outside of time; in fact, He created time. The Bible claims that God moved men through His Spirit to write down His words and that it is not just the word of men but the Word of God (2 Peter 1:20-21), from a Witness Who was there, Who does know everything and Who had written down for us exactly what did happen.

 Thus, the present is not the key to the past. Rather, revelation is the key to the past, that is, revelation from Someone Who was there.[5]

God’s Truth in His Word is an eyewitness history of cataclysmic intervention, a supernatural origin by creation, the revelation of a personal God, human ancestry in the image of God, and a life lived in light of purposeful design.

The Word of God is true, the Genesis Flood was a world covering, cataclysmic judgment imposed by the strong hand of God.

We must Resist the Lie.

 

Affirm The Creator V. 5

5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water,

God has told us already that everything was framed by the Word of Christ the Creator. God says that He made everything from nothing and holds it all together as we saw last time.

We must affirm our Creator.

 

Remember the Judge v. 6

by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

The people of Noah’s day had no excuse for their sin before he built the ark. One hundred and twenty years of God’s longsuffering patience, was more than enough time for anyone to repent who wanted to repent.

 

Escape the Fire v. 7

 

But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

Perhaps the saddest lesson from Noah’s day is that humans have changed very little in their attitude toward God. Jesus reminds us that they will not change even when He returns.

“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matt. 24:37–39).

One glance at the news will remind anyone that our times are like Noah’s: murder, wickedness, materialism, greed, and godless hearts fill our world as his.

Just as only a few listened to God in Noah’s day, so we see few that walk the narrow path of Christ today. The broad road still leads to destruction then and now[6].

 

Seek the Savior v. 8-9

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

It will be a moment of sheer terror when unbelievers face a holy God and realize with absolute certainty that they are eternally lost. That must have been the feeling of the people of Noah’s day when they saw the flood waters rise above their heads and knew the door to the ark was unalterably shut.

 

·         Trust the Word v. 1-2

·         Expect the Scoffers v. 3

·         Resist the Lie v. 4

·         Affirm The Creator V. 5

·         Remember the Judge v. 6

·         Escape the Fire v. 7

·         Seek the Savior v. 8-9

 

[1] The factual statements used in this message are adapted from materials found in several sources: Christians Answers Net, http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c005.html, and T. V. Oommen at http://www.biblediscoveries.com/, and ICR lectures by Dr. John Morris.

[2]  World that Perished. pp. 86-87.

[3] Spyridon Marinatos, “Thera: Key to the Riddle of Minos,” National Geographic Magazine, May, 1972, p. 715.

[4]  http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/wwatch/volcanoes/witnesses.htm

[5] Ken Ham, Creation 8(2):17–20, March 1986 [426 words]

[6] MacArthur, John F., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, (Chicago: Moody Press) 1983.

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