^“…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? 

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

They argue that God does not keep His Word since the promise of His coming has not been fulfilled. 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 about 345 verses in the Old Testament set forth the Second Coming, this is quite an attack on the veracity of God’s promise.

For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.

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 integrity of God’s promise but also the graciousness of His promise.

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.

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.

Uniformitarianism developed first in the field of geology, which holds the universe has a uniform pattern in the processes of nature. It based its philosophy on naturalism. This presupposition put a pall over biblical creation and especially its view of catastrophism. The premise of philosophical naturalism controls their entire interpretation of the universe. 

PRINCIPLE:

God cares about the details of our lives.

APPLICATION:

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.

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. God providentially cares for people and the creation He made.