Article by Gary DeMar “Does the Bible Teach that the Temple Will be Rebuilt?” (source – https://americanvision.org/22629/does-the-bible-teach-that-the-temple-will-be-rebuilt/)

As usual, I found myself dealing with a prophecy expert who assured me that I am wrong because I am not reading the Bible properly. That may be true, but I must be shown from the Bible where I have missed the mark. He assured me that the temple will be rebuilt and many other standard end-time events. Here’s what he wrote:

There is [sic] tons in scripture concerning these things. It may not fit our preferred theological construct, but they are there, nonetheless.

I wrote back and said that I’m not looking for “tons … I’ll settle for an ounce from Scripture.”

I have yet to find one person who can quote one verse from the New Testament that unequivocally states that a physical temple will be/should be built again in Jerusalem.

Some modern-day Jews are preparing for the reinstitution of animal sacrifices and rebuilding the temple:

The Passover sacrifice can only be offered in one place; on the Temple Mount. The sacrifice does not require an actual Temple structure but it does require an altar that is built to adhere to the Biblical requirements. Such an altar was constructed last year and stands ready…. “The Third oath is the Third Temple whose construction will be initiated by the nations, after which the Jews will join in.”  (Breaking Israel News)

If you want to get an idea what the abomination of desolation was (Matt. 24:15), this is it. The religious establishment continued with the sacrificial system in the rebuilt temple, completed around AD 64 and destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, in the place of the true Lamb of God. Those sacrifices were an affront to the redemptive work of Jesus, and in God’s eyes were like the following:

But he who kills an ox is like one who slays a man;
He who sacrifices a lamb is like the one who breaks a dog’s neck;
He who offers a grain offering is like one who offers swine’s blood;
He who burns incense is like the one who blesses an idol.
As they have chosen their own ways,
And their soul delights in their abominations (Isa. 66:3).

There is no need for a temple or animal sacrifice. Those days are long gone. Jesus was that final sacrifice, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. There is no need for an altar or a temple or the Aaronic priesthood. Jesus fulfills all of these.

Unfortunately, dispensationalists continually insist that for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled, the temple must be rebuilt, the altar constructed, and animal sacrifices reinstitution as part of some unfulfilled prophetic history.

Even dispensationalists admit the NT does not say the temple will be rebuilt. For the dispensational system to work, however, a temple must be built. A doctrine so central to a system must have at lest one verse supporting that system. The temple is mentioned numerous times in the NT, sometimes symbolically (John 2; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Pet. 2:4–9) and sometimes physically (e.g., Matt. 21:12; 24:1–2; 26:65; 2 Thess. 2), but nothing is said about it being rebuilt only destroyed.

Dispensational premillennialists need a future “tribulation temple” so their idea of antichrist can take his seat (2 Thess. 2:4), place a statue for people to worship (Rev. 13:14–15), and proclaim himself to be god (2 Thess. 2:4). But what the dispensationalists really need is a verse that states that there will be another rebuilt temple since there had already been one. Rebuilt-temple advocates Thomas Ice and Randall Price admit that “There are no Bible verses that say, ‘There is going to be a third temple.’” ^[1] Having made this revealing concession, they go on to claim, “there will be a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem at least by the midpoint of the seven-year tribulation period.” ^[2]

Don Stewart and Chuck Missler insist, “The crucial issue boils down to how we interpret prophecy. There are two basic ways to interpret Bible prophecy. Either you understand it literally or you do not. If a person rejects the literal interpretation then they [sic] are left to their own imagination as to what the Scripture means…. We believe it makes sense to understand the Scriptures as literally requiring the eventual construction and desecration of a Third Temple.” ^[3] The authors are careful only to say that another rebuilt temple is required. A third temple is required only if you’re a dispensationalist. To repeat, the NT does not mention anything about a rebuilt temple.

Jesus’ completed redemptive work makes the need for a rebuilt temple unnecessary. His ministry begins with the declaration that He is our tabernacle (John 1:14), “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), “the temple” (John 2:19–21), and the “chief cornerstone” (Matt. 21:42; Acts 4:11; Eph. 2:20). By extension, believers are “as living stones, … being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). Those “in Christ” are the true temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21; Rev. 21:22).

Jesus and the people of God are the focus of the only temple that has any redemptive significance. To be “in Christ” is to be in the temple and all it stood for, “the renewed centre and focus for the people of God” ^[4] (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 1:2, 30; Gal. 3:14, 28; 5:6). The NT references to the temple of stone only refer to its destruction (Matt. 24:1–2), never its reconstruction. It is highly significant that “Jesus never gives any hint that there will be a physical replacement for this Temple. There is no suggestion, either in the Apocalyptic Discourse or elsewhere, that this destruction will be but a preliminary stage in some glorious ‘restoration’ of the Temple.” ^[5]

The writer of Hebrews declares that Jesus entered “through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation” (9:11). Since Jesus completed His redemptive work, any new temple “made with hands” is not much different from a pagan temple that has no inherent life or redemptive value (cf. Acts 17:24; 19:26; 2 Cor. 5:1). “[T]he description of the Jerusalem Temple as ‘made with hands’ … is a strong means of playing down its significance. This had been a way of belittling the pagan idols (e.g. Ps. 115:4; cf. Isa. 46:6); to describe the Temple in such a fashion was potentially incendiary.” ^[6] This is because “the author of Hebrews believed the Jerusalem Temple was but a ‘shadow’ of the reality now found in Christ (8:5).” ^[7]

The “new covenant” had made the “old covenant” obsolete that was ready (near) to pass away (8:13).

Stewart and Missler have made it very simple for us to determine whether the Bible addresses the issue of a rebuilt temple. If the Bible is interpreted literally, the need for a third temple should be explicitly stated. What biblical evidence do they offer to support their claim that “the Bible, in both testaments, speaks of a Temple that has yet to appear”? ^[8] From the OT they use Daniel 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11 for support. Ice and Price can only find only one verse for support—Daniel 9:27.

Since Daniel was written after Solomon’s temple had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:8–9; Dan. 1:1–2) and before the second temple had been built by the returning exiles (Ezra 6:13–15), it stands to reason that the “sanctuary” whose “end will come with a flood” (Dan. 9:26) must refer to the second temple that had not been built at the time the prophecy was given. It was this post-exile rebuilt temple that was desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes around 170 BC but not destroyed. After a period of misuse and disuse, Herod the Great restored and enlarged this second temple, a project that started around 20 BC and was completed just a few years before it was destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans, just as Jesus had predicted (Matt. 24:1–34).

It was this same temple that Zacharias served in (Luke 1:9), that Jesus was taken to as an infant (2:27) and later taught in (2:41–52), that had been under construction for forty-six years when Jesus prophesied that He would be its permanent replacement (John 2:20), that Jesus cleansed of the money changers (Matt. 21:12), that He predicted would be left desolate (Matt. 23:38; 24:2), whose veil was “torn in two from top to bottom” (Matt. 27:51), and that was finally destroyed by Titus in AD 70.

Daniel 9:27 is the only verse from the OT that Ice and Price contend supports the need for a third temple. But there is a problem with their reasoning. They argue that “the city and sanctuary” in Daniel 9:26 refers to Herod’s temple that was destroyed in AD 70 (Luke 21:6): “Jesus, seeing Himself as the Messiah, therefore saw the Romans as the people … who will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Knowing that He would soon be cut off (crucified), He likewise knew that the Temple’s destruction would soon occur.” ^[9]

In the span of two verses, these authors find two temples, one in Daniel 9:26 and another in 9:27, separated by 2000 years. As a careful reader will note, the “sanctuary” (temple) that appears in Daniel 9:26 does not appear in 9:27. This means that Daniel 9:27 is describing events related to the already mentioned sanctuary of 9:26 that Ice and Price say refers to the temple that was standing in Jesus’ day.

For Ice and Price to find another rebuilt temple, Daniel 9:27 would have to say something like this: “After an unspecified period of time, he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering in the sanctuary after the sanctuary is rebuilt a second time; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction of the sanctuary after the next sanctuary, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.” Of course, not one word of this is found in Daniel 9:27. ^[10]

1. Thomas Ice and Randall Price, Ready to Rebuild: The Imminent Plan to Rebuild the Last Days Temple (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1992), 197–198.[↩]
2. Ice and Price, Ready to Rebuild, 198.[↩]
3. Don Stewart and Chuck Missler, The Coming Temple: Center Stage for the Final Countdown (Orange, CA: Dart Press, 1991), 193.[↩]
4. Timothy J. Geddert, Watchwords: Mark 13 in Markan Eschatology (Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1989). Quoted in Peter W. L. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City: New Testament Perspectives on Jerusalem (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 9.[↩]
5. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City, 8.[↩]
6. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City, 10.[↩]
7. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City, 208.[↩]
8. Stewart and Missler, The Coming Temple, 194.[↩]
9. Ice and Price, Ready to Rebuild, 68.[↩]
10. For an exposition of Daniel 9:24–27, see Gary DeMar, Last Days Madness: Obsession of the Modern Church, 4^th ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 1999), chap. 25.[↩]

Article “Is Revelation 6 a Prophecy About Today’s Pandemic and Other Apocalyptic-Like Events?” by Gary DeMar (source – https://americanvision.org/22538/is-revelation-6-a-prophecy-about-todays-pandemic-and-other-apocalyptic-like-events/)

Some prophecy writers are claiming that Revelation 6 depicts what’s taking place today with earthquakes (one just hit Utah) and pestilence or plagues. Is the Coronavirus a fulfillment of Revelation 6:8?:

I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, “to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence [θανάτῳ] and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

The Greek word translated “pestilence” is θανάτῳ (thanatō) and is translated elsewhere as “death.” The rider of the horse is named θανάτῳ, the same word translated as “pestilence” in some translations.

Similar language is used in Jeremiah 15:2–3 for a local judgment against Jerusalem (15:4–14). The same is true in Jeremiah 24, especially verse 10, where a different Hebrew word is used and is translated as “pestilence” and not just “death.”

The more accurate translation in Revelation 6:8 is “death” that would include pestilence and other effects of war and famine. “The story of Mary of Bethezuba is a story of cannibalism told by Josephus in his Jewish War (VI,193) which occurred as a consequence of famine and starvation during the siege of Jerusalem in August AD 70 by Roman legions commanded by Titus. The tale is only one account of the horrors suffered at Jerusalem in the summer of 70. “

In Luke 21:11, the Greek word λοιμοὶ (loimoi) is used and is translated as “plagues,” the only time the word is used in the New Testament. As I have mentioned in a previous article, pestilences and plagues are not unusual. They can be found in the Old Testament, secular history, and the era leading up to Jerusalem’s judgment in AD 70. For example, the Roman historian Suetonius wrote that there was such a “pestilence” at Rome during the reign of Nero that “within the space of one autumn there died no less than thirty thousand persons, as appeared from the registers in the temple of Libitina.” ^[1]

Wars and rumors of wars, famines, plagues, and earthquakes. These are the biblical signs. All of them are realities of planet earth each days. Is Jesus coming back soon? Did Jesus provide an exact, predictable scenario as so many modern prophecy writers advocate?Buy Now

Now we come to the meaning of Revelation 6. What’s going on in this chapter? James M. Hamilton, Jr., a premillennialist, writes that “the opening of the seals in Revelation 6 corresponds to what Jesus describes in the Olivet Discourse in the Synoptic Gospels.” ^[2] I agree. See my books Is Jesus Coming Soon?, Last Days Madness, and Wars and Rumors of Wars.

The following chart is from Hamilton’s commentary on Revelation:

If the Olivet Discourse is describing events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem that took place within a generation (Matt. 24:34), then Revelation must be given a similar interpretation. Consider how stellar phenomena are depicted.

A verse-by-verse study of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 that puts it into its biblical and historical context.Buy Now

In Revelation 6:13­–14, we read, “the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.” This passage is a partial citation from Isaiah 34:4 using the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Septuagint (LXX), which reads, “all the stars shall fall.” ^[3]

If this is a description of physical stars, there would be an immediate end to the earth, and yet we find the earth still intact in Revelation 8:10 where “a great star fell from heaven.” If one star hit the earth, the earth would be vaporized in an instant. In fact, if a star like our sun gets close to earth, the earth would burn up before it hit. How could the earth survive if a “third of the stars of heaven” had been thrown down to the earth (Rev. 12:4)?

Then there’s the description of the male goat in Daniel 8:10 that causes “stars to fall to the earth,” an action that would destroy the earth if Daniel was describing actual physical stars. These fallen stars are then “trampled” by the horn of a goat. It must have been a mighty big goat horn, similar in size to the giant woman in Revelation who was “clothed with the sun,” stood on the moon, and had a “crown of twelve stars” on her head (Rev. 12:1). Most likely the horn refers to a civil ruler and the stars represent civil or religious authorities ^[4] under the ruler’s dominion.

Jesus is using language that was understood by the people of His day. The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with similar symbolic “sign” (Rev. 1:1) language. There is dramatic end-of-the-world language in Zephaniah that is directed at Jerusalem and Israel (Zeph. 1). John Lightfoot makes the point that seemingly end-of-the-world language is a common feature in the Bible and most often points to the end of the social, religious, and political status of a nation:

The opening of the sixth Seal [in Rev. 6:12–13] shows the destruction itself in those borrowed terms that the Scripture uses to express it by, namely as if it were the destruction of the whole world: as Matt. 24:29–30. The Sun darkened, the Stars falling, the Heaven departing and the Earth dissolved, and that conclusion [of] ver. 16 [in Rev. 6]. They shall say to the rocks fall on us, &c. doth not only warrant, but even enforce us to understand and construe these things in the sense that we do: for Christ applies these very words to the very same thing (Luke 23:30). And here is another, and, to me, a very satisfactory reason, why to place the showing of these visions to John, and his writing of this Book [of Revelation] before the desolation of Jerusalem. ^[5]

For many Christians, interpreting Bible prophecy is a complicated task. As a result, they often turn to so-called Bible experts and complicated charts that include gaps in time, outrageous literal interpretations, and numerous claims that current events are prime indicators that the end is near. Many Christians are unaware that the same Bible passages have been used in nearly every generation as “proof” that the end or some aspect of the end (the “rapture”) would take place in their generation.Buy Now

When was this judgment to take place? Jesus had His present audience in view as He made His way to the cross:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed’ [Matt. 24:19; Luke 21:23]. Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US’ [Isa. 2:19–20; Hos. 10:8; Rev. 6:16] For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:28–31).

When was the tree dry and without fruit? The last days of the generation that was confronted from the judgment sequence prophesied by Jesus.

Even though this virus is not an end-of-the-world sign or event, it should get our attention that we are mortal and almost any unforeseen event could lay us low and even kill us. Eternity is but a heartbeat away.

1. C. Suetonius Tranquillus, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Nero, 39.[↩]
2. Hamilton, An Interview with Dr. James Hamilton. For further discussion of this point, see James M. Hamilton, Jr., Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 166–167. Also, Louis A. Vos, The Synoptic Traditions in the Apocalypse (Kampen, Netherlands: J.H. Kok N. V., 1965), 181–188.[↩]
3. J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 179–210.[↩]
4. James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 2^nd ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision Press, 2007), 426–436.[↩]
5. John Lightfoot, The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot Containing “The Harmony, Chronicle and Order of the New Testament,” ed. John Rogers Pitman, 13 vols. (London: [1655] 1823), 3:337.[↩]

Article: Is the Dissolution of the Heavens and Earth on the Horizon? by Gary DeMar – source https://americanvision.org/22532/is-the-dissolution-of-the-heavens-and-earth-on-the-horizon/

If there’s one passage of Scripture that is repeatedly brought up as an indictment against people who object to modern-day prophetic speculation it is 2 Peter 3:3–18. If you dispute with those who argue that all the signs around us indicate that we are living in the “last days,” then you are labeled a “scoffer” or a “mocker” (2 Peter 3:3; Jude 18). If this is how the passage is to be understood, then how should Bible students who argued against similar prophetic speculation during the two World Wars and previous periods of social, civil, and moral unrest going back centuries be evaluated? Those who questioned the prophecy speculators were correct in their skepticism that they were not living in the last days!

Every generation has had people who claimed the end was near and others who argued that the end was not near. Appealing to contemporary signs to make predictions of a near end of all things has a long history as Francis X. Gumerlock demonstrates in his book The Day and the Hour. One would think that by now Christians would stop doing it. But they don’t. They know revving people up over the “last days” sells books . . . lots of books.

The people Peter and Jude accuse of being “scoffers” were enemies of Jesus and the gospel and were alive when Peter and Jude wrote their letters. They scoffed at the claims made by Jesus that the temple would be destroyed (Matt. 24:2) and Jesus Himself would be the person to make it happen before their generation passed away (Matt. 24:34; 21:18-46; 22:1-14). Since nearly 40 years—a generation—had passed since Jesus had prophesied about the impending destruction, and the temple was still standing with no indication that it would be destroyed in their lifetime, the scoffers began to mock the words of Jesus. “Where’s the sign of His coming? Your Jesus predicted it with certainty, and it has not come to pass. All is as it has been. Based on the Law of Moses, this Jesus was a false prophet” (see Deut. 18:22).

A similar situation happened regarding the prophecies related to Judah’s captivity in Babylon. Consider the following from 2 Chronicles 36 and compared it to Jesus’ description of the destruction of Jerusalem that was prophesied by Him in the Olivet Discourse in the Synoptic Gospels:

Furthermore, all the officials of the priests and the people were very unfaithful following all the abominations of the nations; and they defiled the house of the Lord which He had sanctified in Jerusalem. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, until there was no remedy. Therefore He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or infirm; He gave them all into his hand. All the articles of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his officers, he brought them all to Babylon. Then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles. Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete” (vv. 14-21).

There’s a big difference between a “scoffer” who rejects God’s word outright and someone who argues for an alternative position using sound biblical arguments. A person who disagrees with modern-day prophetic speculation is not a “scoffer,” especially when there have been so many failed attempts at predicting the certainty of the end over the years.

One could just as easily make the case that modern-day prophetic speculators are “scoffers” and “mockers” because they twist and distort Jesus’ clear words that He would return in judgment before that first-century generation passed away (Matt. 24:34; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32). Some of today’s prophecy speculators try to argue that the Greek word genea—best translated as “generation” (Matt. 1:17)—can be translated “race” or “nation.” When that doesn’t work, some argue that “this generation” (the generation of Jesus’ day: e.g., Matt. 12:41–42; 23:36), should be translated “that generation” (a future generation). For example, Henry Morris, who insisted that the Bible should be interpreted literally on issues related to creation, does not take the same approach when he interprets the Olivet Discourse prophecy:

The word “this” [in Matt. 24:34] is the demonstrative adjective and could better be translated “that generation.” That is, the generation which sees all these signs (probably starting with World War I) shall not have completely died away until all these things have taken place. ^[1] That is, that generation—the one that sees the specific signs of His coming—will not completely pass away until He has returned to reign as King. ^[2] Now if the first sign was, as we have surmised, the First World War, then followed by all His other signs, His coming must indeed by very near ^[3]—even at the doors! There are only a few people still living from that ^[4] generation. I myself was born just a month before the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. Those who were old enough really to know about that First World War—“the beginning of sorrows”—would be at least in their eighties now. Thus, we cannot be dogmatic, we could very well now be living in the very last days before the return of the Lord. ^[5]

When Jesus’ clear words don’t suit their prophetic paradigm, words are removed, new words added, and Greek words redefined. “This generation” becomes, “the generation that sees these signs,” as if Jesus was addressing a generation other than the one to whom He was speaking. Jesus made it clear that His present audience (“you”) would “see all these things” (Matt. 24:33).

Second Peter 3 links “scoffers” (v. 3 in KJV; “mockers” in NASB) with “the last days” (v. 3), “the promise of His coming” (v. 4), the “day of the Lord” (v. 10), and the passing away of the “heavens” and the “earth” (v. 10). “Last days” is not code for events leading up either to an event called the “rapture of the church” or a future second coming. Gordon Clark comments:

“The last days,” which so many people think refers to what is still future at the end of this age, clearly means the time of Peter himself. I John 2:18 says it is, in his day, the last hour. Acts 2:17 quoted Joel as predicting the last days as the lifetime of Peter…. Peter obviously means his own time. ^[6]

There are other passages like Hebrews 1:1–2 (note the use of the plural near demonstrative: “in these last days”), Hebrews 9:26 (note the use of “now”), “as you see the day drawing near” (10:25; also 1 John 2:18), 1 Corinthians 10:11 (“upon whom the ends of the ages have come”), and James 5:3 (the storing up of their treasure was in “the last days” not “for” the last days). The question is, the last days of what?: the last days of the old covenant with its stone temple, blood sacrifices, and earthly sinful priesthood, the theme of the book of Hebrews. It’s not only the end of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants.

Twice in the New Testament an explicit comparison is made between Jesus and Adam. In Romans 5:12–21, Paul argues that ‘just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus] the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19, NIV). In 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul argues that ‘as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive,’ while in verse 45 he calls Jesus the ‘last/ultimate/final [ἔσχατος/eschatos] Adam.’”

Given that most Christians who make the “scoffer” charge are premillennial, that is, those who believe that after a future seven-year period that includes the Great Tribulation, a thousand-year reign of Jesus on the earth will immediately follow. It’s only after this 1007-year period (the 7-year tribulation period plus the 1000 years of Revelation 20) that the events described in 2 Peter 3 come to pass (the new heaven and new earth). According to the dispensational view, the “new heaven and a new earth” comes into existence after the first physical heaven and the first physical earth passes away (Rev. 21:1). Given premillennial assumptions (which I believe are wrong), this means that the events described by Peter could never be near since more than 1000 years is not near.

How can a person be a “scoffer” or a “mocker” of prophetic events that are about to happen when the supposed dissolution of the cosmos is more than a thousand years away? It doesn’t make any sense. The charge only makes sense if the described events are actually near, near to those living in Peter’s generation and were familiar with Jesus’ prophecy. Those in Peter’s audience were looking “for these things” (2 Peter 3:12). How could they be looking for “these things” if they were at least 1007 years in their future?

Why didn’t Peter say that their math was out of whack, that the “new heaven and the new earth” are more than 1000 years in the future. According to the dispensational way of interpreting prophecy, we have at least 1000 years before there will be a physically renovated cosmos. This can’t take place until after Jesus reigns on the earth for 1000 years.

In fact, once Jesus sets foot on planet earth again, according to premillennialism, it will be quite easy to calculate when the events of 2 Peter 3 will take place—exactly a thousand years later. To silence a “scoffer,” all a person has to say is, “Look, God promised that these events won’t happen for a thousand years.” This means that for the premillennialist, the events revealed and described by Peter can’t have anything to do with our time. They are still far in the future. This means that this section of Scripture can’t be used to club those who reject the notion that we are living in the last days.

Peter specifically says, once again following the premillennial paradigm, the last days are at this moment in time at least 1007 years in the future. So, if the “last days” refers to the period just before the dissolution of the cosmos that is at least 1007 years in our future, then we can’t be living in the “last days” and there are no signs that can be called into evidence to support the claim that a new physical heaven and earth are on the prophetic horizon.

1. Henry M. Morris, The Defender’s Study Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: World Publishing, 1995), 1045.)

Prior to these comments that are found in his Defender’s Study Bible, Morris wrote the following extended comments on Matthew 24:34 in his book Creation and the Second Coming:

In this striking prophecy, the words “this generation” have the emphasis of “that generation.” ((I received the following comment in an email from someone supporting the view held by Morris: “I will admit that the word ‘this’ has ALWAYS presented an obstacle to a full understanding of the Discourse. Have you ever considered [if] this word COULD HAVE BEEN ‘that’ in the original [Manuscript]? I believe from my reading that could have been possible” (November 12, 2007). Almost anything is possible, but there is no indication that the Greek word ekeinos (“that”) was ever used. It’s pure conjecture.[↩]

1. There is nothing in Matthew 24 that says Jesus is going to return to reign as king on the earth.[↩]
2. Why does “near” mean “even at the doors” for Morris in his day, but it did not mean “near” in the first century?[↩]
3. Notice how Morris uses the far demonstrative “that” to refer to a generation in the past. How would he have described the generation in which he was living? Obviously with the near demonstrative “this” to distinguish it from “that” past generation.[↩]
4. Henry Morris, Creation and the Second Coming (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1991), 183. Morris died on February 25, 2006 at the age of 87.[↩]
5. Gordon H. Clark, II Peter: A Short Commentary (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1975), 64.