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Remember, Judgment is Coming, Part 3
The End Ahead
2 Peter 3:10-13
Bruce A. Hess
If you would now, please take out the word of God and turn in it, in the New Testament, to 2 Peter, chapter number 3. 2 Peter, chapter number 3.
If you’ve been with us in our study of 2 Peter 3, you will know that the thrust of 2 Peter 3 is around Biblical prophecy and the events of the end times. Peter acknowledges in this chapter that there are cynics and there are scoffers out there who, when it comes to Biblical prophecy and the events of the end times, they would say, That’s silly; that’s frivolous; that’s just end times superstitious stuff. But the truth is, God is orchestrating history. He is large and He is in charge.
You know, the highest concentration of Biblical prophecy in the New Testament is found in the book of Revelation. I want you to notice what it says in a couple of places there. In the very first verse of the book of the Revelation it describes it this way, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God [the Father] gave Him [Jesus] to show to His bond-servants, the things which (notice the next word) must soon take place.”
Then, in Revelation, chapter 4, in verse 1, there is a voice from heaven and it says, “…I will show you what must take place…” what has to happen because God is large and in charge. Scripture gives us a sneak preview of future events and using baseball terminology, the Scripture is batting 1000. The Scripture has 100% accuracy when it comes to previewing future events.
Now, a lot of times our view in the world as things are happening all around us—we tend to think, well, things are just falling apart. In reality, things are just falling into place according to God’s plan.
Today we are going to be looking at chapter 3, verses 10-13, a message I have entitled, “The End Ahead.” I would like to read with verse 10, down through verse 13 and invite you to follow along in your Bible as I am reading. Peter writes and he says,
“But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! (Verse 13) But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.”
So, you take those four verses, verse 10 down through verse 13, I think they break into three parts.
We have The Day of the Lord in verse 10.
We have Our Reality Check in verses 11 and 12.
Then, we have God’s Great Promise in verse 13.
We are going to begin by looking first at The Day of the Lord, there in verse 10. Now, notice how the verse begins, it says, “But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief.” I want to pause for just a moment here and I want to clarify some things about the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord is actually a technical term. It is used four times in the New Testament, here in 2 Peter 3, but also in Acts 2:20, also in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, and in 2 Thessalonians 2:2. So, let’s just clarify a little bit about the Day of the Lord.
The first thing I want you to notice is that It is mentioned also in the Old Testament. I want to look at a little bit of an extended passage from the book of Isaiah, in chapter 13, verses 6-11, where it talks about the Day of the Lord. Notice what Isaiah says, he says, “Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come! Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt. They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor.” It goes on to say, “They will look aghast at one another (in the Day of the Lord). Behold, the Day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. (This is some amazing stuff, startling stuff.) For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.” He goes on to say, “I will punish the world [this is God speaking] for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity: I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.” (ESV)
See, the Old Testament also talks about the Day of the Lord. Another passage we could look at comes from Zephaniah 1:15, where Zephaniah says, of the Day of the Lord, “A day of wrath is that day. A day of trouble and distress. A day of destruction and desolation. A day of darkness and gloom.”
So, we are just clarifying a little bit about The Day of the Lord. We have seen that it is mentioned in the Old Testament. Secondly, I want us to see that The Day of the Lord is an era of time. You know, what is interesting is Hebrew and Greek are no different really than English, because in our languages you can use the word ‘day,’ and sometimes it refers to an era. If I were to say to you, ‘I was just reflecting back on the day of my youth.’ I’m not talking about a single day, I’m talking about the era of my youth. Or, as we might say in Oklahoma, ‘You remember the day of the cowboy?’ Well, we’re not talking about there being one cowboy or one day, we’re talking about an era in Oklahoma, you know, more than a hundred years ago, when it was the era of the cowboy. As we examine the passages that address The Day of the Lord, one of the things we discover is, it is not just a day, it is a period.
The third thing we want to notice, by way of clarification, is that The Day of the Lord is not only an era of time, it has two phases to it. It has a phase of judgment and it has a phase of blessing. You can just see this when you look at the passages. For example, let’s look at a passage from Joel, chapter 3 and we are going to look at verses 14-17 ultimately. In chapter 3 of Joel, verses 14-16, it is emphasizing the judgment phase of the Day of the Lord.
Notice, “…The Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon grow dark and the stars lose their brightness. The Lord roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem and the heavens and the earth tremble.” That is the judgment phase, but the very next verse in Joel talks about the blessing phase of the Day of the Lord. “Then (on the Day of the Lord, during that era) you will know that I am the Lord your God…so Jerusalem will be holy, and strangers will pass through it no more. And in that day the mountains will drip with sweet wine and the hills will flow with milk…and the spring will go forth out from the house of the Lord.”
So, you have this idea: it is an era of time and there is a judgment phase and a blessing phase. A further way that we can unpack that, putting a bunch of passages together, is the judgment phase represents what we often call The Tribulation Period. That is a seven-year period. Then, the blessing phase encompasses the Millennial Kingdom, which goes for a thousand years. Now, the Tribulation Period and the Millennial Kingdom, the judgment phase, and the blessing phase, culminate or they end with the destruction of the heavens and the earth and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, and Peter is going to talk about those events some here in chapter 3.
Now you see a lot of this put together in much more detail in the book of Revelation, which Pastor Mark is taking us through. In Revelation, from chapter 6 to 21, you have this judgment phase and you then have the blessing phase being described in detail in those chapters.
Let’s go back to 2 Peter 3:10. Notice it says there that, “The Day of the Lord will come like a thief.” I want you to notice something that might be easy to miss in English, when it says, “The Day of the Lord will come.” In the original language that verb “will come” is very emphatic, it is very, very strong. Peter is saying the Day of the Lord will come, count on it, he is saying. Don’t doubt it for a minute.
Then, he says, “The Day of the Lord will come like a thief.” How does a thief come? Well, a thief comes in a sudden, abrupt, without an announcement mode. You know, if a thief was going to hit my house, here is what he would not do: he would not call my cell phone, ‘Hey Bruce, you don’t really know me, but I just want you to know that on Thursday night about 2:00 AM I am going to break into your house.’ A thief doesn’t do it that way. When someone comes like a thief it is sudden; it is abrupt; and it is without warning.
The Day of the Lord’s coming will be a little bit like an earthquake coming. Most of us are aware of the San Andreas fault zone in California, but many of us don’t even know about the fault zone that is in the middle part of the United States. It is called the New Madrid [pronounced MAD- RID] fault zone. The New Madrid fault zone is six times larger than the San Andreas fault zone in California. It is encompasses parts of Arkansas, and Tennessee, and Mississippi, and Missouri, and Kentucky, and Illinois.

Some of you might be thinking, ‘I’ve never heard of the New Madrid fault zone.’ Well, if you lived in the 1800’s—in the early part of the 1800’s—you knew about the New Madrid fault zone. The Great San Francisco earthquake [part of the San Andreas fault zone] happened in 1906. It registered 7.9 on the Richter scale. On December 11, 1811, in the New Madrid fault zone there was an earthquake that registered 8.6 on the Richter scale and less than two months later, in February of 1812, there was another earthquake in the New Madrid zone that registered 8.8 on the Richter scale.
When those earthquakes happened in the New Madrid fault zone, many small towns were completely destroyed. There were huge landslides that happened. There were 100-foot fissures that opened up in the earth spewing out sulphur. The second one, in February of 1812, woke up Dolly Madison [a famous figure] in Washington, D.C., a thousand miles away. It rang church bells in Boston. There were small islands that existed in the Mississippi River that just disappeared when that earthquake happened. There was, in that second earthquake, a river tsunami that occurred, where the Mississippi River flowed backwards [to the north] for several hours. It was an event that was sudden and abrupt and without announcement.
You might say, ‘Well, wait a minute, Bruce, can’t we sometimes know that an earthquake could be near or could be close? Aren’t there some signs that an earthquake might be ready to happen?’ I think sometimes a seismometer can tell us and warn us about seismic tension that happens, but the actual event is still going to be sudden, abrupt and without an announcement.
Here is another question: are there any signs that The Day of the Lord could be near? There are a number of answers we could give to that question. For example, in the book of Daniel we know that in the time of The Day of the Lord there is going to be present a revived Roman Empire. There is going to be a new empire that emerges out of the overall geography of Rome. It could very well be that the EU that we see today is a forerunner of that final form.
We know from the book of Revelation that the Anti-Christ is going to be able to control the functions of selling and the buying among people worldwide. For many generations that was never even a possibility, but now we have the technology for someone to actually control everybody around the world regarding what they can buy and sell. So, that could be another sign that The Day of the Lord is near.
There are more that we could explore, but what I really want to emphasize is what I call the Super Sign that The Day of the Lord could be near. The Super Sign is the nation of Israel existing back in their land…the nation of Israel existing back in their land.
You know, what happened to the Jews as a people is unprecedented in human history, but, on the other hand, it is exactly what Biblical prophecy predicted would happen.
See, when you look at what Jesus has to say about the end times; the Apostle John; what Daniel has to say; what Zachariah and many more of the prophets have to say: they picture Israel as a nation in the time of The Day of the Lord being back in the land as a national entity. Now that is utterly amazing when you think about it.
Israel was conquered by Egypt; conquered by Assyria; conquered by Babylon; conquered by the Medes and Persians; conquered by Greece; conquered by the Romans; then in 70 A.D. the nation disappeared and the Jews and the people of Israel were scattered all around the world. By the way, the Jews are the only exiled people in all human history who remained a distinct people, despite being scattered for more than 2,000 years—20 centuries—into 70 different countries.
Note exactly what the Bible says. Jeremiah, chapter 30, verse 3, “’Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel and Judah.’ The Lord says, ‘I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers and they shall possess it.’”
Ezekiel 34: 13, the Lord, “I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them back to their own land.” This is truly an amazing story. You know that in the late 1800’s there were just a few thousand Jews who had made their way back to their former land. In 1948, when the UN officially recognized Israel as a nation, there were 650,000 Jews who were there. And in 2021 there were now 7,000,000 Jews who live in the land of Israel. There are more Jews in Israel today than there were when Jesus was on the earth.
Now, this is all forecast by God. It starts with a physical return to the land of Israel, but at the Second Coming there is also going to be a spiritual return to the true Messiah. We’re not there yet, but there is this beginning of this physical return, but there is eventually going to be a spiritual return also.
So, the Super Sign that The Day of the Lord could be near is that the nation of Israel exists back in their land. When the Day of the Lord is described in many places, that is where we see them. They are back as a nation.
The event of The Day of the Lord is still going to be sudden and abrupt, without announcement. We might know that it’s near, but we don’t really know when it would occur. It ultimately will be sudden, abrupt and without announcement.
Go back to 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 10. Notice it says there that the heavens will pass away. Literally, the original language means, it is going to go away; it’s going to pass away; it is going to go away with a roar it says. This is the only time in Scripture this word roar appears. It is describing a rushing, crashing, terrifying sound.
Then, I want us to look at a couple of phrases in verse 10 that are in translated differently by our major translations. You may have already noticed that as I was reading from the New American Standard. Let’s look at these phrases. First, “The elements will be destroyed” is what the New American Standard says. The ESV says, “The heavenly bodies will be destroyed.” A different way of translating the phrase. You look at that and you think, why do they say different things there?
Well, the word in the original is indeed the word for ‘elements.’ What the New American Standard translators decided to do is not try to interpretively determine what the elements are. The ESV translators, though, decided to choose a potential interpretive option for what the elements are. One possibility is that the elements—it’s a very valid possibility—would be a reference to the sun, the moon, the stars, and the constellations. So, therefore, the translators, the scholars for the ESV decided to basically choose one of the options of what the elements might refer to and they translated it “the heavenly bodies,” referring again to the sun, the moon, the stars, and the constellations.
But, in the New American Standard they chose not to interpret it the term. In fact, the New King James and the NIV are the same way, they just say “the elements” will be destroyed. There are several different options but it is hard to truly know what Peter was referring to when he said “the elements.”
Another interpretive option would be, “the elements” are describing the very building blocks of matter. In verse 10, the verb that is translated ‘destroyed’ is a word in the original language that just means to ‘be loosed.’ It could be also translated, the elements will “disintegrating”; they will dissolve. So ‘the elements’ might be a description of the atomic level of life: neutrons, the protons, the electrons, that level of life.
You know, it has always made people wonder: what holds those things together? If that is the reference of “the elements” we know what holds them together. Scripture tells us that. It tells us that Jesus (Hebrews 1:3) upholds all things by the word of His power. Colossians 1:17, “In Him (Jesus) all things hold together.” It is Jesus holding even the elementary elements of our world together!
So, IF, when he is talking about “the elements” it is a description of the breakdown of matter—it really is describing more of an implosion than an explosion. And note…the product of all of that is intense heat. Someone mentioned to me at the end of the first service, well, that is what nuclear activity is about…it’s just the destruction and the breakdown of matter.
As I said, there are a couple of phrases that are translated a little differently in our Bibles depending upon which translation you have. The second phrase I want us to look at is the New American Standard and the New King James version say, “The earth and its works will be burned up.” The ESV and the NIV say, “The earth and its works will be exposed.” So, what is really going on here? What’s happening?
Now, most of us who’ve been around the church for a while understand that when we talk about the Word of God being without error, we are talking about the Word of God in its original form. But we don’t have the original, we have manuscripts and sometimes the manuscripts read a little bit differently.
At times, people get worried like—well, how many of those variations are there? So, when you look at the New Testament and you take all the variations in the manuscripts, they add up to about half of a page. So, it’s not a lot. And importantly, the variations do not affect any major doctrine. But here we have one of those illustrations of a variation since the manuscripts have different verbs in them. That is why one set of manuscripts say, the earth and its works will be burned up. Another set of manuscripts say the earth and its works will be exposed.
Then, you say to me, Bruce, which one is right? And I say to you, I don’t know. I really don’t know which one is right. I don’t understand for sure. But let me give you some thoughts. If the original had the verb ‘burned up,’ what does it mean “The earth and its works will be burned up?” I think the idea would be that the achievements of man, the great cities, all the majestic elements of this world are going to be burned up. If the original used the verb, ‘be exposed,’ what does that mean? Well, the idea there would be that the earth and its works—the things that are done on earth—are going to be exposed; they are going to be uncovered, exposed to judgment. The deeds done on the earth will be exposed to judgment.
So, I go through all of that because I don’t like it when people look at different versions and they see a different verb and they get confused, or they start to doubt Scripture’s integrity. These are slight differences that don’t change the overall thrust.
Now, I want you to look down at verse 12. It carries on with this idea here, where it says, “The heavens will be destroyed by burning.” That is that same verb that means ‘to loose or dissolve.’ The heavens will be destroyed by fire and by burning. You know, we live in an era where there is an awful lot of heated discussion about global warming and people have all kinds of different ideas about it. Well, you have global warming, but here, 2 Peter is talking about global burning. He says in verse 12, “The elements (the same word that was used in verse 10) will melt with intense heat.”
What does this all really mean? Well, we need to remind ourselves that this universe—which is all we’ve ever known—is not permanent. The good news is: God is permanent!
So, as we look at these verses, we have The Day of the Lord in verse 10. The second thing we want to look at is Our Reality Check in verses 11 and 12. Notice how verse 11 begins, “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way.” The same verb we’ve seen before, ‘to loose’ or ‘to dissolve.’ He asks this question, “What sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?”
When we first read that in English we might think he is saying: what sort of people should you be, like it’s an optional thing. But that’s not the way the original is worded. What sort of people is it necessary for us to be is really what it says. What sort of people must we be as followers of Jesus?
You notice he goes on to say, what sort of people should we be—is it necessary to be; must we be—then he adds in verse 11, “In holy conduct.” Now, you can’t really see this in English—and we can’t actually translate it literally from the original—but this phrase, “in holy conduct” is plural in the original. What sort of people is it necessary—must we be—in holy conducts[plural]. See, we can’t translate that well into English. I think what Peter is referring to here is our external actions. What sort of people is it necessary—must we be—in our external actions?
Then he also adds, in godliness. Which again, in the original, is plural. We don’t talk this way in English. Peter refers to what is it necessary for us to be in godlinesses [plural again] You see how we can’t really translate it that way? I think this second term is referring to our practical attitudes that we have. In summary Peter is mentioning what is it necessary—what we must be—in both our external actions and our practical attitudes.
It is important for us to remember something, men and women. I mean, we know this, but we don’t often operate in daily awareness of it. Our citizenship as followers of Jesus is in heaven, Philippians 3:20 tells us that. We are aliens, 1 Peter 2:11 tells us that. There is a lot of talk right now about aliens and people coming into our country and who has residency and who is a non-resident and so forth. We are spiritual aliens; we are non-residents. We are transients here. Now, we are also high-ranking ambassadors, 2 Corinthians 5:20 tells us that.
I think here is the thrust of what Peter is communicating to you and to me. Because our citizenship is in heaven; because we are aliens; because we are non-residents here; because we are transients here; and because we are high-ranking ambassadors—we should be living by the standards of our true homeland, the moral and ethical standards of heaven.
Now, I think is it sad that sometimes followers of Jesus become prophesy junkies, they become overtly riveted onto prophetic truths and then start to overlook other parts of Scripture. They often overlook the practical impact that prophesy is designed to have on our life.
Warren Wiersbe did a great job of just expressing this. He says, “It is unfortunate when people run from one prophetic conference to another, filling their notebooks, marking their Bibles, drawing their charts, [here comes the key part] and yet not living their lives to the glory of God.”
God has given us prophetic truth, men and women, not merely for our information, but rather for spiritual motivation. Peter will expand on that a little more as he ends chapter 3.
What sort of people must we be in our external actions and in our attitudes? Then, he says in verse 12, “Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” We are to be anticipating, we are to have our eyes on what is coming in the future. Don’t lose sight of it. Then, he talks about how we can be hastening the coming of the day of God. How do we do that? I mean, isn’t God the one who is large and in charge? Isn’t He the one who is writing out history before it happens?
So, how do you and how do I hasten the Day of the Lord? Well, we can do what Jesus taught us to do. He taught us to pray, right? He said pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” We can hasten the day by praying that way.
In fact, the early church did this very thing. You know, it is interesting to me when you get to Revelation 8—and Pastor Mark will get us there soon—but there in chapter 8 you have a scene in heaven, and you have the prayers of the saints that are there on a golden altar in heaven. Why are they there? Because they are significant to God. God responds to the prayers of the saints.
So, we see the early church praying to hasten the day. In 1 Corinthians 16:22, you have the word ‘Maranatha.’ That is a word that the believers would often say to one another. Maranatha. It is really a prayer: Lord, come! Lord, come! Then in Revelation 22:20, when the Apostle John is closing his book, he says this, it is also a prayer, “…Come, Lord Jesus.”
So, we can hasten the day by saying to one another and to God: Maranatha, Lord Come! Come, Lord Jesus!
As we said, we were going to do three things. We were going to look at The Day of the Lord, we were going to look at Our Reality Check, the last thing we want to look at is, God’s Great Promise in verse 13. Look at verse 13, “But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.”
We are looking ahead to a whole new universe and that whole new universe is going to so grand that Isaiah says this of it in 65:17, “…The former universe will not be remembered or come to mind.” It is going to be that grand and it is going to be a universe—as it says in verse 13, in which righteousness dwells. I like the way the NET Bible translates it: it’s a place, a universe, in which righteousness truly resides.
God is going to, with His righteousness, permanently settle in there. There will be no more suffering, no more sadness, no more injustice, no more grief. They are forever banished! You can go to Revelation, chapter 21 and read a little more detail about that.
Having looked at all these verses, I want to say, Selah. Selah was a word that was used in the book of Psalms, in various psalms. The idea of Selah was, as things were being taught and said, that we should just pause and reflect. I think we need to do that as we are looking at this today. We need to take some time to pause and reflect.
Which leads us into some Life Response I think that we can have. I am going to suggest three different life responses. One is to trust in, another is to clean up, and a third is to reach out. So, lets’ look at those three different responses that we can have as we reflect on these passages.
The first one is to Trust in our Sovereign God. I mean, we can get disturbed by what we experience in life. It is also easy to get disturbed when we look at what is to come. We need to trust in our sovereign God. Psalm 46, verses 1 and 2 talks about how, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change (and that is going to happen one day) and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea.” We don’t have to fear if we are diagnosed with a disease. We don’t have to fear if a loved one is taken from us. We don’t have to fear if we lose our job. We don’t have to fear the global burning that is ahead. We need to trust in our Sovereign God.
Another life response I think Peter he would have for us is to Clean Up our Spiritual Act. As we’ve looked at truth today, we need to remember that truth is supposed to affect us; truth is supposed to change us. I find it easy to drift into spiritual lethargy. Thus, I need the word of God to wake me up a little bit. I want to suggest an exercise that I think would help all of us. Go to Galatians, chapter 5, verses 19-21, which lists out the deeds of the flesh, and then in verses 22 and 23 it lists out the fruit of the Spirit. Go there and reflect on those things before the Lord. Look at the listing of the deeds of the flesh; look at the fruit of the Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit evaluate your heart. It is very likely there will need to be some confession from some sinful attitudes and actions maybe that we’ve drifted into. There will be no doubt need to be some renewed reliance on the Holy Spirit. Maybe say to God, I want You to develop those traits in my life!
Then, the third life response, as we reflect on all this, would be to Reach Out to Your World, to reach out to your world. You know, we are not called as followers of Jesus to retreat. We are not called to withdraw. We are not called to disengage from the culture. Philippians 2:15, rather we are called to be “Blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world.”
You know, we are not to withdraw and disengage, we are to be shining as stars in our culture. Matthew 5:16, Jesus put it this way, He says, “Let your light shine before men (before men, not that you’ve moved to a remote mountain somewhere) in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” We need to reach out to our world. We cannot control people’s response to the light, but we can, can, faithfully shine. We can share the light of the gospel.
I strongly want to encourage you to do something this week and that would be to make it a priority this next week to pray for one person that you know that does not know Jesus Christ, and to pray for them all week long. There are literally tens of millions in our generation who are unaware of, and unconcerned about, coming judgment. Let’s pray for some of those people. I just want to encourage you in all of this: God can use you! He can use you! His plan is to use you and to use me.
Let’s pray together. Father, we thank You again for the Word of God. We thank You for the incredible truth that is here, the startling truth that is here. Then, the amazing thing—I’ll go to my grave always being amazed—is how You want to use people like me to shine Your light on other folks. May we be men and women who are honoring You with our life and sharing the good news of deliverance from judgment through Jesus Christ. We pray these things in His name. Amen.
Questions for Reflection
The End Ahead
2 Peter 3:10-13
1. Have you ever heard of the New Madrid fault zone before? Generally, where is it and how does it compare to the San Andreas fault zone in California? If another 8.8 quake (like in 1812) were to happen now how much more damage do you think might occur? [Note that the modern city Memphis was founded in 1819).
2. Bruce mentioned at the start that God has always been orchestrating history (He’s large and in charge). He then read from Revelation 1:1 and 4:1 where God states these future events “must take place.” Why must they? What does this tell us about our God?
3. Bruce spent some time clarifying the nature of The Day of the Lord (it’s mentioned in verse 10). If you had to explain its significance to someone else—how would you explain it? Expand on it some.
4. What are some of the reasons why the nation of Israel existing back in their land is such a super sign of approaching end time events?
5. Verse 10 and verse 12 stress that one day the heavens and the earth are going to be dissolved and destroyed with fire. Knowing that God gave stewardship over the earth to Adam and that we are called to be stewards of what God has given—what is the balance between concern for the environment and the truth that this world is temporary? Discuss.
6. Bruce said prophetic truth is not given to us by God merely for information. Rather, He does it for our spiritual motivation. What does that mean for our everyday lives?
7. Take some time to pray: 1) to thank God for His sovereignty 2) to pray for one person that you know who does not know Jesus as their Rescuer.