^“…and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”

and saying,

Mockers make the following claim.

Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep,

These skeptics ridicule the promise of Christ’s coming. This word “promise” means a gracious promise, a promise with no strings attached. This promise does not depend on what we do but on what Jesus’ did for us.

They make the argument that since the promise of His coming has not been fulfilled, God does not keep His Word. The return of Christ is at the core of Christianity. If there is no future for Christianity, no heaven, and no presence with God, then what is the point of our faith? Since there are about 345 verses in the Old Testament that set forth the Second Coming, this is quite an attack on the veracity of God’s promise.

These false teachers argue that we live in a stable universe. We cannot expect such events as the Second Coming of Christ. Mockers not only ridicule the veracity of God’s promise but the graciousness of His promise.

all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation

The word “continue” means to continue throughout, i.e., without interruption. These scoffers maintain that nothing changes. God does not intervene in creation. Creation goes on the same year after year. Deists declare that God made the world and then went off never to connect to it again. They claim that God is not interested in the world. He is so tied up in celestial red tape that he does not have time for us.

Today we call the claim that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism means that the present cosmos is simply a reflection of the patterns of the past. This philosophy precludes God’s incursion into time and space and postulates a universe run by natural laws.

PRINCIPLE:

God cares about the detail of our lives.

APPLICATION:

This particular attack on Christianity is an attack on the character of God. God does not keep His promises. He has blind apathy toward His creatures.

Weak minds and wicked motives will seize on the idea that Christianity is a dilution. If there is no future accountability, there is no hope. There is no sense of awe neither of God nor of facing Him in eternity.

God declares that God is a personal God who is so involved in our lives that He counts the hairs upon our heads (with some of us, that may not be much of a problem!). He knows each tear we shed.