In 2 Peter 3, Peter predicts that mockers will come and say, “Where is the promise of His coming?” (Greek: parousia, literally: presence). In other words, where is the Lord?
In Hosea 6:2, we read that God will “revive Israel after two days” and “raise them up on the third day.” This means that after two days, on the third day, He will come to restore Israel.
Peter undoubtedly thought of this prophecy from Hosea when he said:
2 Peter 3
8 But do not let this one thing go unnoticed by your beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
2000 years
When we speak of the “days” in Hosea, we must count as the Lord counts. After all, 2 Peter 3:8 states: One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. From that perspective, the two days in Hosea represent a period of two thousand years. This time would elapse before the second coming of Christ, when He will restore Israel and establish His kingdom on earth.
Peter points out that the promised Kingdom would take longer than initially thought. He explains that we can find this in Paul’s letters:
2 Peter 3
15 and consider the patience of our Lord (for) salvation, as our beloved brother Paul also writes to you, according to the wisdom given to him,
16 as also in all his letters in which he speaks about these things. In them are some things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do also in the other Scriptures.
Peter knew: Paul’s letters belong to Scripture
In these verses, Peter declares that he is familiar with the content of all of Paul’s letters and equates them with the other Scriptures. Peter knew, therefore, that Paul’s letters belong to God’s Word and that, together with the Hebrew Scriptures and the writings of the other apostles, they belonged to Scripture.
Urgency
Peter wrote all this just before he was about to die, and in his letter he stated that he would endeavor to ensure that his readers would be reminded of these things even after his passing. In this way, Peter demonstrates how important he considered it to gather and preserve the Scriptures, so that the testimony of God’s Word would be preserved and would continue to guide believers.
In the next blog post, we will see that Mark, whom Peter calls “my son,” is Peter’s connection to the apostle Paul.