approximate beginning of this great Day of the Lord, perhaps a literal thousand years of the Lord's physical reign on earth (Revelation 20:6).¹
No doubt you are attempting to align this current millennial speculation with your own engraved eschatological chart, but what concerns this article is the impression that we are in an age of transition. There is much talk today of a "paradigm shift," a rending of the "Sacred Canopy," which is a change in societal worldview.²Some portray a culture war taking place between conservative and liberal ideas (forces?). But is this merely a philosophical readjustment within human society, or are we facing divine eschatological events? If the "Day of the Lord" is at hand, then the transfer of kingdoms implies catastrophic superventions.
Biblical Christianity holds a linear view of time and space. The world and the Church are headed somewhere; there is a beginning and an end--there is a consummation. God is the Architect of the Ages, the Author and Finisher, who directs the course of history and the destiny of mankind (Daniel 4:25,34,35; Acts 17:26-31).
Peter's second epistle delineates three distinct world orders (Gk: kosmos) through the ages: (1) the antediluvian world, (2) the present world, and (3) a new world yet to come. Things do not continue as they are, as scoffers of the Word of God would say; there are cataclysmic, epochal events that mark the transition from one world order to the other. Time does not stretch out into eternity. Kingdoms of raging heathen do not become Christ's through gradual democratic political processes.
The first cosmic transition was accomplished through a watery deluge whereby the world "that then was" was destroyed. Note that the earth itself was not destroyed, but rather cleansed from all wickedness. Note also that the righteous were not the ones "taken" (as in a snare), but the ones left to establish a "new heavens and earth." This is the present world in which we live and which is being kept by the Word of God unto "fire against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men"--the next cosmic transition.
This limited space does not allow a discussion of the pyrotechnics of this prediction. The essential question Peter asks is, "What manner of persons ought we to be?" He is not concerned with environmental destruction (God hasn't filed for an EPA permit), nor does he comfort us with cunning fables of escape. Rather, he expects us to "look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" and admonishes us to be diligent to be "found in Him in peace, without spot, and blameless."
Like Noah, we are not exempted from the medium of God's judgment upon the earth. But consider that the same instrument of judgment in Noah's day was the medium that lifted him above the destruction. The secret of his salvation was to be "found" in a particular vehicle impervious to that medium. "By faith, Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house" (Hebrews 11:7). Perhaps we, having also been warned of things not seen as yet, would do well to follow Noah's example and prepare a vehicle that will take us through this fiery transition.
But what kind of fire-proof "ark" could we build today? Certainly, the Lord has
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