Bible Survey - 1, 2 Peter

Okay. Yes, this is 1 and 2 Peter. So here's Peter, who shows up of course in all four of the Gospels. And we have several kind of bullets here on your handout. He was first named Peter by Christ. So Christ gave him that name. It wasn't a name he grew up with. Why was he given the name Peter? Does anybody have any recollection of that? Why was he given the name Peter? I had the comment about him being a stone. Yes, right. You are, Peter, using the word for a stone, right? And upon this rock, big rock, OK? I will build my church." So it wasn't Peter.

And then he had the name Simon, and it's called Cephas in our kind of anglicized form. Actually, the Greek has Kephas, which would have been actually an Aramaic name carried over into Greek. The fisherman by trade on the Sea of Galilee, where Christ called him to be a disciple, originally a resident of Bethsaida and then Capernaum. Known initially for his bold, if unenlightened, statements and proclamations. He had foot and mouth disease. Yes. Rather chronically. You know, Lord, you can't wash my feet. Oh, then I must. Then wash everything, you know.

That's why we can relate to him so well. Yes. Yes. And think about this. Why would the Lord pick a guy like this to have you know, a place of leadership in the early church. The same reason why he picks us. He sees the potential that's there. He knows what you can become. Yeah, isn't that something? He doesn't pick us on the basis of what we are. He picks us on the basis of being in Christ and what we are going to be made into, right? Being conformed to His image and transformed? Okay. Most prominently portrayed among the twelve disciples in the four Gospels. He kind of volunteers to be a leader by being rather outspoken whether what he says immediately is good or not.

Credited with both great statements about and tragic denials of our Lord. There's an archaeologist, Dr. Leon Rittmeier, who is probably one of the foremost archaeologists regarding the area around the Temple Mount. He is incredibly knowledgeable and has gone and made both above ground and underground architectural drawings of things so that we can get a sense of where things are. My reason for mentioning him, Dr. Leon Rittmeier, has what he believes located the exact spot Peter was standing when Christ looked at him across the courtyard.

A leading spokesman among the apostles in the first 15 chapters of Acts, he's not mentioned in the book of Acts after 15. Paul ends up being the focal point then. So he was the apostle who passed on the gospel of salvation to the Gentiles, that's Acts chapter 10. Remember, he was given instruction, you know, take and eat, and he, uh-uh, not doing that. And then he recognized, no, the Lord wants me to take the gospel to the Gentiles here. And when he got back, He had some explaining to do because the rest of them didn't understand.

And then finally, written about by Paul with whom he spent some time. So Paul wrote about Peter and Peter wrote about Paul. So these wrote about each other, real interesting. Peter also mentions Paul and illuminates for us some things about Paul's letters too. And real interesting, Peter, also had another time after he was an apostle and after the church was begun, and the church had been around some time.

I remember in Galatians where Paul confronted Peter on that he was kind of sliding into a hypocritical pattern of now separating himself from the Gentiles after having been the one that introduced the gospel to the Gentiles. So here's 2 Peter 3, 4-16. In the middle of page 1, Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they also do the rest of scriptures to their own destruction."

So, we have this heading here on the bottom of page 1, whatever happened to... Now there's a supplement, a color supplement, looks like this, a timeline. And the reason for including that, this is kind of a color-coded timeline of the life of the Apostle Peter.

In other words, what do we have evidence for and what not? This particular timeline was originally set up for 30 A.D. More evidence is lining up with an April 3rd, 33 A.D. crucifixion. But nonetheless, what you find is Peter is recorded as being present in Jerusalem in those areas that are outlined with the red along the timeline. And then absence from Rome strongly indicated in some of these other places with the green highlight.

And let's think about this. What would be some of the things that would be indicators that Peter is not in Rome? Can you think of what some of those things would be? Yeah? It was written that he was somewhere else. Yeah, you look at Acts 15, where did he come from? It looks like he came from Antioch. But something else, too, here's the Apostle Paul, he writes to the church in Rome. That's the book of Romans, right?

Sixteen chapters. The last chapter has a whole lot of, you know, greet this one and greet that one, and in some cases people you've never heard of. And so you end up having this fairly long Greek disc, read that one, and it doesn't include Peter. If Peter were in Rome, that would be a very strange thing to omit, considering that they both wrote about each other. So that would be one example of evidence that he's not there. So the bottom line is, the only place where we really have evidence that Peter was there, and even some of that is debated, is in the middle 60s, you'll find two places, footnote there with 11 and 12, that indicate that Peter's possibly or probably in Rome. Whereas the claim of the Roman Catholic Church, of course, is that he spent 25 years as a bishop, but the evidence doesn't line up with that.

Okay, now back to the bottom of page one here. The tradition that we have outside of scripture is that Peter was crucified upside down because he didn't want to be crucified like the Lord. Crucified upside down in Rome. Again, that's outside of scripture tradition. Let's look at the top of page two. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

The reality is that Christ was crucified, but because it was a Friday before the Sabbath, the Romans accommodated that by making sure that everyone was dead. And so, it looks like he's dead, and they pierced his side, and the water and the blood came out separately, and he was dead. He died voluntarily, by the way, not death in the sense that his life was taken from him. The two thieves, however, would have gotten the treatment where they came along with an iron club and smashed the shin bones and then suffocated. Ordinarily, crucifixion was a long, painful death anyway.

And Peter would not have had that same limitation. So the bottom line is the Romans don't care. If you sit up there for days, eh, no big deal. And so if you die slower, so what? They don't care. Yeah, I mean, so the death would not be the usual suffocation.

Something else, you know, this is from my civil engineering days. Something else is that while this would result in half your weight being on each arm, when you go out like this, you have a huge increase in the tension on this joint. And depending on how tightly your made to be on that cross, I've done some calculations, you might have as much as 700 pounds of coal on each arm. So that's going to be pretty intense.

So, yeah, Peter's death may well have been very slow. Not quick at all. Well, and if you're not getting food and you're not getting water, your body's system gets a slow shutdown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not getting food and water, so, you know, suffocation may be typical, but you've got other things. If it goes on for days, the Romans don't care. They don't really give a hoot.

Okay, so now we have some interesting connections between 1 Peter and the Book of Acts. And these are in the bullets there towards the top of page 2. So Acts 4.11 and 1 Peter 2.4, it speaks in both places about Christ as the rejected stone. So real interesting parallels there.

Acts 1.22 and 5.32 and 10.39 matches up with 1 Peter 5.1, the eyewitness of Christ. So here's Acts written by Dr. Luke, And then here's 1 Peter written by Peter, and it's amazing, just some real good connecting points there. And you're thinking, even though we don't have a lot of description of it, it sounds like Dr. Luke would go around and talk to these guys and be a very careful recorder of what's going on and inquire about things. So anyway, I'm just rather amazed with the connection.

Acts 10.32, 1 Peter 1.17, God has no respecter of persons.

And what is that no respecter of persons? Does that mean he disrespects us? What does that mean? Just like James when he talked about if a poor man comes into your assembly and a finely dressed man comes in, you treat them differently because of their appearance. Yes, so we can quite possibly have different from a human standpoint, different assessment of people based on biases. The Lord sees the heart, the Lord's not impressed by this guy's more wealthy or that guy looks more handsome. So things like that, whatever humanly people are impressed with, God doesn't look at that. God looks on the heart.

So Acts 10.42 and 1 Peter 4.5, God is judge of the living and the dead. Those same phrases are used there. And so what amazes me is Dr. Luke does not just put things in his own words, although he does in places have his own characteristic writing. But he listens very carefully to the way certain people write and speak. And he notices things that probably a lot of us might just pass on.

So Acts 15.9, which is the last time Peter speaks, and 1 Peter 1.22, the cleansing of the heart. So I can imagine, here's Dr. Luke and he's listening. How does Peter write and talk? So it's interesting, the parallels. So Acts was written a couple years earlier than the first Peter, most likely. So first Peter was apparently drawing upon the content of the book of Acts, so listening there.

If this is so, it appears likely, then this brings more evidence of the circulation of New Testament documents among those early in the church. When the various New Testament books were written, it was recognized, hey, this is Scripture, and they began distributing these things and copying them among those in the churches. So that we have, for example, in Paul writing to Timothy actually quotes from Luke, the Gospel of Luke. We have Paul writing to the church at Colossae and he says, you know, read this letter and take it over here and read the letter to the Laodiceans, which we don't have. to the other churches as well. So real interesting, just the understanding of these books need to circulate.

1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 1, the Apostle Paul says, you need to, and he uses the word reckon, it's the same word from Romans 6.11, you need to, and it's the same form too, you need to understand that we are stewards of the mysteries of God. So Paul saw himself as having a stewardship and being responsible for carrying around the truth. And he wanted the Corinthians to understand that Paul wasn't just writing a letter. We're stewards of the mysteries of God.

Alright, now, to whom is he writing? Now this is interesting too. Both 1st and 2nd Peter are written to believers, of course. And in 1st Peter 1.1, Peter listed the regions where the letter is addressed. So it's scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. And so you see those on the map to the left. And I say, Wendy, I think you've been to some of these places, haven't you? Cappadocia? Yeah. Cappadocia was a real interesting one.

The Romans actually had a little difficulty conquering Cappadocia because they had They had stone houses and they had housing underneath the ground with very good protection. At one place they found housing underneath the ground in one locality that would accommodate up to 28,000 people. It was a city underground and the entrance to it had a stone It had a stone that could be rolled into place, and then of course you wedge it so that it can't be rolled back out from the outside, plus a little hole in the middle. So if somebody goes like this to start looking in, they get poked. So you have this area, and including Galatia, right there about in the middle.

Okay, so these would have been generally Greek-speaking regions, although there were certain dialects kind of within that. Alexander the Great, when he went and conquered an area, he went and established, you know, you will speak this way. And there were dialects before that he tried to erase, but of course what happens over time, because he went in and and then died young. He went in, died young, so a lot of the dialect started to come back into place.

But people would read and understand Greek. Top of page 3. 2 Peter 3, 1 and 2 says, This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you. That lines up here, and he doesn't, in that one, list these regions, but we get the implication there, he's writing to the same people. "...in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandments of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles."

So these believers live in the areas that range from port cities to plains to mountainous regions with Roman roads traversing through every one. The Romans built roads by hand. They had a standard, it didn't matter what the terrain was, they had a standard cross section. And you start off with smaller rocks and then larger rocks and then you put large slabs of rock on top and that's the way you build it. They built it by hand. The Roman soldiers themselves did it.

And by the time Rome collapses an empire, they had enough roads to go two times around the world. Just an amazing accomplishment. And some of those roads are of such quality that now, roughly 2,000 years later, many of them are still workable. In one case, for example, at Philippi, all they had to do was just put asphalt over the top so you could drive a little faster. Anyway, that's true of a lot of those roads.

So now, these believers lived in areas that ranged from all this. Asia alone had about 500 cities and towns, including Ephesus, and the Roman Empire's third or fourth largest city. There were both common and unique varieties of agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and medicine. So, a real variation there.

So, when did Peter write these letters? It would be nice if Peter had written a date on his letters, but the dating system that we use was one that didn't actually come up until some centuries later, and very interestingly, was not accepted until a little less than a century ago. Not fully accepted, until less than a century ago. In Russia, for example, they maintained a different system until the Bolsheviks came into power. So under the Tsar, they didn't accept the pronouncement of Gregory about the calendar that we use.

So 1 Peter about 63 AD, 2 Peter about 66 AD, And then, according to the biblical chronologists and whatnot, 2 Peter is likely written about a year before Peter's death. Yeah. Okay, Rome came in and destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. When did the rebellion start? About 68? 66 AD was when the rebellion of the Jews began.

They began by taking over the Antonia Fortress and killing all the Roman soldiers there. They just overwhelmed the Roman soldiers that were stationed there. So they started with that and then pushed the Romans out. Of course, Caesarea over on the coast was basically a Roman military city built under Herod the Not-So-Great. And so the Romans reaction once they got the news was to slaughter all the Jews in Caesarea Which of course didn't do much the Romans took a while to get their act together They drew they had several legions there.

They drew from about 12 legions to gather together the soldiers they did from as far away as Britain and And so finally, pulling it together after a few years and a few false starts, pulling it together in 70 AD, July 1st, 70 AD is when they started their battering rams against the gates. And then by August, middle of August, they overwhelmed Jerusalem. And by the way, that was the last time that anybody's heard of any of the descendants of Esau. About 100,000 of the descendants of Esau came and volunteered to fight with the Jews against the Romans, and that was the last of them.

Now, we have in 1 and 2 Peter a very interesting growth theme. 1 Peter 2, 1-3, Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babes, long, this is imperative, you must long, for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.

Now, when you match that up with 2 Peter 3.18, It's very interesting. We have the same word grow, except that in 2 Peter it's an imperative. So long for the pyramid of the Word is the imperative in 1 Peter. Grow is an imperative in 2 Peter.

So let's take a look at that. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard. so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow imperative in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen."

So, here's an imperative to grow. How can you... If I come to you and say, grow! What does that do for you? You must grow. What? How can you respond to an imperative to grow? Yeah? It's important. Okay, it's important, right? But what am I supposed to do if there's an imperative to grow? Yeah? Sort of like when your doctor gives advice about the diet. Okay. The way that you follow through is by doing those things which encourage growth.

And so if I get an imperative from God that says grow, and I think that the character and will of God are revealed in the Bible, then that means I'll go to the Bible and search diligently for his truth, and that my growth will be because I'm taking in the proper nourishment, as it were, for growth. So here's Peter, when he says grow and puts an imperative to it, he's actually already answered that question in 1 Peter. So the imperative there is, you must long for the pure milk of the word that by it you may grow.

There is the means of growth. So he's given it to them already. He didn't just tell them, grow. There is also a direction of that growth. A direction and location. Grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it isn't just randomly, you guys need to just grow. but grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there is a direction and location of that growth, and the means of it is, by God's word, that by it you may grow. So he answers the question.

But he has the imperative, you must long for the pure milk of the word. The imperative is written such that it's an appeal to the will. How do you, as an appeal to the will, long for the pure milk of the Word? How do we do that? Don't people just say, longing for it, that's how I feel, or I don't feel. How can he make it an imperative?

There is, in being created in God's image, we are given a will, we are given a volition. We can consider the things that we're thinking about and be purposeful. Not legalistically, but in a fellowship. It's the same thing as when we get this imperative, love one another.

The love is not how I feel about Randy. The love is based on the commonality we have in that we are in the same family by God's grace and that the empowerment to do these things, the longing, comes from the work of the Holy Spirit manifesting itself in us. So if we go with the old man, as we've talked before many times, that I may not love or long to grow or things like that. Some mornings I don't feel like getting up. It's a matter of the will versus the body. It is an act of will that we're looking at here, not just do I feel like it. Yes, Pat?

Well, since there weren't Bibles in every household at this time, how were they to go to I mean, find groups of men. So here there were groups who were teaching something other than the truth, and groups that were teaching the truth. Would they have a directory, or maybe they go to the temple, or how do they How do they discern which is which?

Yeah. One thing is, of course, you couldn't just print out a bunch of Bibles. Everything is hand-copied. But one of the things that was far more common in New Testament times in the churches was to have Scripture read. And unlike us, where in our culture, if I can look something up, I don't bother memorizing it.

They would memorize things. As a matter of fact, being a disciple And the Christians are called disciples all the way through the book of Acts. Being a disciple meant that you memorized the words of your rabbi. So it would be real common for people to hear and memorize things and not necessarily rely on reading like we do. Let me give you an example. Here's the book of Revelation. And at the beginning, there's a promised blessing to those who read singles and hear, plural.

So the reading and the hearing combination was far more common and memorizing from audio input was far more common than it is typically in our culture. Like I say, if we don't have to, you know, we don't go around trying to memorize everything. That culture was memorize things and typically by audio. And so they'd go around and drill one another on, you know, Jesus said this and Paul wrote that. So memorizing, when you hear something and then memorizing it would be far more common. Discerning which group to listen to, I think, would be One of the exhortations that they would have is, you know, the things that we pass along to you, commit to faithful men will in turn teach others also.

And Paul did have to deal with people who came up with fake letters. He wrote to the Thessalonians about that. Just along the same line, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians and chastised them, or some of them saying, well, I'm from Apollos' school of thought, or I'm from Paul's school of thought, and then chastised them and said, no, isn't there one in Christ?

So good question and a good thought. Yeah, yeah. Paul would write things, and this is in the context of a culture with a lot of Roman soldiers, with the cleated Sandals. Stand firm, which had a military sense to it. Stand firm in THE faith. The term THE faith continues from Acts chapter 6 on into the book of Revelation. It is repeatedly referenced. THE one faith. Jude writes, I urge that you contend. Epiogenesimaios, which is an intensive athletic effort. I urge that you contend with an intense athletic effort for the faith, the singular faith. Okay, let's take a look. There's the first Peter at a glance, and second Peter at a glance on page four. It's kind of a graphical outline.

So Peter first starts off talking about, for about a dozen verses there, the salvation of the believer, and then the sanctification of the believer for the rest of chapter 1 and into chapter 2. And then he gets into, it says government, dealing with the government, and business, and marriage, and all of life. Why would he go into those things? dealing with the government, business, marriage, and all of life. Yeah? A couple of things, but definitely one, like, those are ways in which we can represent Christ. Yeah, okay. It's practical application, isn't it? It's practical application.

There were real challenges in dealing with this government, because it was a government that wasn't Christian. Well, in the Christian government, at this point in time, they were just beginning to have some opposition. The Jews usually had to cook up some kind of story to get the Roman government down on the Christians up until about this point. And then in marriage, why would he have to address marriage?

I think all three of these can affect the way that you believe in the way that you act. Yeah, yeah. The culture, well certainly the culture was varied. The culture had all kinds of really different ideas about marriage. It was, for example, typical for a husband, it was just fine for him to have all sorts of other intimate partners. That was considered just normal.

And now here's Peter, be faithful to just your one spouse. these writings, because they apply to all ages and all cultures, I can immediately think of applications to us right now in America, how do we respond to government, to what's going on with business ethics and with the definition, redefinition of what marriage is.

Yes. As a friend of mine says, you can marry your horse, but that doesn't constitute a marriage in God's sight. Yeah, in other words, you can do all sorts of things legally. And matter of fact, we have this problem that whatever is legal isn't necessarily moral. Right? Whatever is legal isn't necessarily moral. So things can get pretty askew, and that's why you need instruction and not just do what's legal. Right? Yes, yep.

And then another key thing, he has a section in the middle of chapter 3 particularly dealing with conduct during suffering. And this was one of the passages they covered in, I think it's an elective, we'll probably need to repeat sometime soon, and that's trials and suffering. It's something a lot of Christians are ignorant about or don't know enough about. If I'm going through suffering, it doesn't mean God hates me or He's punishing me. If I'm going through... What's that? Count it all joy, yes. And so Peter addresses this. Having the right understanding about pain and suffering is very important. Otherwise, Christians can get way off track thinking God's punishing them. They can get mad at God. They can blame it on Satan. Oh, Satan's just doing this and I'm under spiritual attack. Well, maybe not. Probably not, as a matter of fact.

So having the right perspective on suffering is exceedingly important. And then he goes on to Christ's example of suffering. Yes. In chapter verse 9 he says, resist the devil. Yes. And then knowing that the same suffering are experienced by your brotherhood. Yes.

So when he says same suffering, is there a typical suffering? Is he just talking about persecution or other types of suffering? Well, his point there is common among the brethren, right? Others are suffering too. Is there some kind of suffering he's talking about?

No, I think it's in general, you know, there's a variety, just like James puts it. There's a variety of suffering. Sometimes it's suffering because of persecution, and that was amping and ramping up. So there's suffering because of persecution, but you may be suffering for various reasons. Other brothers and sisters are going through things for various reasons as well.

Suffering and guilt can go together. And guilt is the one that really affects a person emotionally and in a lot of other ways. And like you were saying, that's kind of the precipitator of you know, disliking God, or feeling that you're being pursued by Satan or whatever. You've got this guilt feeling and you can't get rid of it. So, it's a big issue. Let's ask this question.

Does God ever punish a believer? No. He disciplines, or he may have us going through trials to grow us. God does not punish a believer. There's no evidence that that takes place. He disciplines us, and what's the discipline intended to do? To restore us back into a place of fellowship, where we may still have trials, but those trials are to grow us. So essentially he has a theme of suffering that goes on there from the middle of chapter 3. Conduct in suffering, Christ's example of suffering, commands in suffering, and then minister in suffering. So that the last part of the book all has to do with various aspects of suffering.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, I think what happens is both Peter and James will have that resist the devil, you know, theme briefly. The Apostle Paul goes into more detail. But what's interesting is the theme in all of them is not a, you know, go and attack Satan. theme, but stand your ground. Resist the devil, stand your ground, and that perspective rather than we're going on this spiritual aggressive attack. Now what does resist the devil consist of? It consists of standing your ground and the weapons other than the sword The weapons of the faith, and this is Ephesians chapter 6, starting with verse 10. The weapons of the faith are largely defensive, and it goes along with standing your ground.

Yeah, Al? I like the illustration you use sometimes of the Roman soldiers and the formations that they had. Yes, the tortoise formation. And it's sort of the same idea, at least in my mind, that a standing my ground has to be has to do with how firm is my foundation? What am I standing on that's giving me a solid joy or peace or hope or rest or love or whatever? It's got to be based on that. Identification with Christ.

If you go back to just the root of it all, my standing is not that I'm making up my mind, I'm going to be strong. Because I'm not. As Paul writes that anomalous thing, when I'm weak, then I'm strong. Because I'm not trusting my own power, I'm trusting God and His way and His will to enable me to stand.

If you think about it, we have a position So everything about our position in Christ has been given to us by God. And so the exhortation to resist is really, in your condition, remain in your position. In your condition, remain in the position that you have by God's doing.

What Christians will sometimes do is think they have to go aggressively attack Satan, or bind him, or I don't know who lets him loose. But Christians are often brought into a mindset of blaming everything that seems bad on Satan. Christians are often brought into a mindset of I have to go aggressively attack Satan, or bind him, or something like that.

And none of that is supported by Scripture. This is all, you're making a different kind of battle out of it than scripture makes. Yes? One that you pointed out that I've never even thought of in the 60 plus years that I've been a Christian, and that was the response of the angel when Satan was doing his dirty work, and said, God rebuke you. The Lord rebuke you. I don't have the power to rebuke you, but God. Yeah, the Lord rebuke you. There's even cautions against reviling angelic majesties and even Satan.

So, yeah, it's something we need to look at. What does Scripture say? And what Scripture does is say, let's, in our condition, stay firm according to our position. And that's resisting the devil, to put it simply. Let's look at the 2 Peter outline here. What's interesting is it talks initially about growth in Christ, and then what does the last verse of 2 Peter talk about? growth in Christ.

So it's a theme from start to finish. Second Peter is a lot more focused on last days, the final days, and what's going to happen to the present heavens and earth? The atoms come apart. Everything is torched. Yeah, fervent heat. So 2 Peter is more of the perspective of looking ahead. In view of the fact that all this stuff is going to burn, how ought we to live right now? What should be our perspective? And by the way, that is a key thing.

We're talking about longing for the pure milk of the Word. What do you value? In other words, we have to value something to have a desire for it. So what do you value? That's where the long, you must long, has its roots. I first have to understand the value of it before I'm going to long for it. Yes?

Okay, when you say heaven and earth, we've talked about this before because you said that There's earth and mid-heaven and then there's the spiritual heaven. Yeah, the Bible has three heavens. One is our atmospheric heaven. Right, so is this the one that's going to burn? The universe? The whole thing. Because it's a new heaven and a new earth, right? So yeah, the whole universe. This whole central universe is going to be torched. And there'll be a new heaven and a new earth. By the way, why replace heaven? Why not say, hey, heaven's just great. Why replace it?

One is the place of rebellion. We know from Revelation chapter 12 that one-third of the angels sided with Satan at that time of rebellion. One-third of the angels sided with Satan. And so it's a place of rebellion. And so a new heaven untainted by the satanic rebellion will be necessary.

The implication too is that all of the physical universe has been tainted by sin. Just like Adam's fall didn't just affect Adam, But in Adam we have all sinned. So in the same way, just like in Romans where Paul writes that the nature is groaning waiting to be restored to its perfect state. So you get the implication that it isn't just some little part of creation that got contaminated. It's like the yeast example of spreading through the whole physical universe. Yeah, this whole physical universe is not operating on an internal model, right? By the fall, everything was put into a decline, ultimately.

So then basically, you're saying that there's going to be a new beginning? Because Genesis starts off with the beginning of the seven days, so all this is going to burn up, and then there will be another beginning. One of the things that we observe when we teach through Genesis and through Revelation is kind of the bookends theme. That things are either continued or resolved from the beginning chapters of Revelation.

Take for example, the Tree of Life, where does it show up? It shows up in the Garden of Eden, right? And then where do you find it again? In the book of Revelation. And by the way, The book of Revelation was written to what churches? The seven churches, starting with Ephesus. And did you know that the marketplace in Ephesus had a fake tree of life?

It's kind of amazing. So at any rate, you look at the beginning, at the end, you look at death as introduced in Genesis chapter 3, And then you look at the last couple of chapters of Revelation and no more death. And so you see things begun and problems began and problems resolved. in Genesis, the early chapters, and Revelation, the final chapters.

Yes. An old evangelist named Vance Havner used to say that what he really liked about the Bible was it started off with no devil and it ended up that it took care of it. Yes, yep. Okay, let's pray. I need to go make some preparations here. Lord, we thank you for this very special pair of books that you have caused Peter to write. A man whom you taught many things and started out saying all kinds of things he shouldn't have and then ended up writing inspired scripture. We just thank you for the example in his life of how you worked in his heart and his life and changed him. And Lord, we just commit the rest of this day to you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.