Peter warns of false teachers in the churches who will attack or dismiss the Biblical promise of Jesus’ return in glory. These scoffers arise in the last days.

I. The Doubters (2 Pet 3:3). J Barton Payne lists 574 verses in the Old Testament predicting the first coming of Jesus (Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy) and 1,845 to His second coming in the entire Bible. In the New Testament alone, one of every 25 verses is about His return, Jesus mentioning it 21 times. In addition, the Apostles taught that His return was imminent (at any moment), Paul expected to be alive to see it (I Cor 15:51; 1 Thess 4:17).
Peter writes that scoffers will come scoffing. The word scoff (empaiktes) means to belittle what is important, or ridicule. Instead of looking forward to His return, false teachers and their followers will make fun of God's promises.



II. Their Depravity (2 Pet 3:3). Those who scoff at the idea of the Second Coming walk according to their own lusts. The word walk (poreuomai) describes the order, conduct, or manner of one’s life; a lifestyle (2 Pet 2:10). They walk like the false teachers, motivated by their own self-interests, self-love, and lusts (epithumia) which are strong, passionate cravings of desire (2 Tim 3:1; 2 Pet 1:4; 2:10, 18; 3:3). Their scoffing is a cover for a sinful lifestyle they don’t want judged at Christ’s return. These mockers aren’t believers, but apostates, false believers. Believers don’t mock what Scripture plainly and repeatedly states (Acts 1:10-11; Rom 14:12; 1 Cor 3:12-15; 4:5; 2 Cor 5:10; Phil 3:20-21; 4:1; 1 Jn 3:2-3).

III. Their Disbelief (2 Pet 3:4-6). False teachers know the Word but disbelieve the Scriptural promise (epangelia) of Christ’s literal and bodily return. They know the Word but reject it because they haven’t witnessed the fulfillment of God’s long-standing promises (Mt 16:4).
The patriarchs or Old Testament fathers had long fallen asleep (koimao) in the same way saints of the Church Age have died and await Christ’s return (1 Thess 4:13-18). The word asleep is a beautiful euphemism, which is a pleasant way of saying something emotionally unpleasant or uncomfortable. Koimao literally means to lie down, and a dead body looks like it’s sleeping (Jn 11:11-15). The Biblical word for resurrection (anastasis is only used of bodily, physical resurrection) means to stand up, as if one wakes and stands from sleep.
The mockers argue that God never steps in and upsets the natural order of life and history. They argue that the universe and history are stable, but God’s Word is unreliable. People live and die, but nothing really ever changes. But the Bible reveals that God has interrupted the history of the universe many times (2 Pet 1:21; 2:1, 4, 5, 6, 7-8, 15-16). This explains the importance of stirring up our minds with reminders from God’s Word (2 Pet 2:12-15; 3:1-2). You must remember because they forget! And their forgetting is willful (theol) meaning a deliberate, conscious, purposeful, persistent choice or decision, which is done because they love their sin (Jn 8:12).
Peter offers two specific proofs of God’s intervention in the history of the universe, both related to his earlier claim of God’s judgment in Second Peter 2:4-8.
First, the Lord spoke and created the universe so that God’s creation had an organized order (sunistemi, to stand out of) (Gen 1:1, 6-8, 10). Some of the water God created was put on the earth, some within the earth, and the remainder formed a firmament or barrier water canopy in the atmosphere around the earth which created a greenhouse effect keeping the whole earth at one constant, temperate climate (Gen 1:10).
Second, in the Flood of Noah’s day, God broken open the fountains of the earth and shattered the firmament (Gen 7:11) destroying the world (kosmos), the arranged order of the earth’s surface. God’s judgment, more significantly, ended man’s sinful order of life (Gen 6:5-7, 11-13) which then existed. God caused mans’ established order to perish (apollumi), which means to ruin something so it can't be used again and life has never been the same since. Mankind in the day of Noah rejected God, lived in sin, and went about life “as usual” as if nothing was going to change (Gen 7:11-12, 17-21; Mt 24:37-39; Lk 17:26-27; Heb 11:7).
God caused a worldwide flood (katakluzo), the basis for our English word cataclysm, meaning to overflow by flood of water. This word is only used in the Bible of Noah’s flood (Mt 24:38-39; Lk 17:27).
The floodwaters God used came from two sources acknowledged by Peter: water on and in the earth, and the crashing down of the firmament (Gen 7:11; 8:12).
Noah’s 120 years of preaching righteousness (2 Pet 2:5) and the building of the ark were both signs of God’s impending judgment ignored by scoffers, just as the return of Jesus in judgment is scoffed at today.