Universal Flood. Universal Fire?

Some readers have objected to the inmillennial^⁠1 interpretation of Peter’s day of the Lord passage (2 Pet 3:1–13). They’re responding to John Formsma’s posts (starting here) that show these verses describe God’s judgment of Israel—her land and her temple. That judgment would occur in Peter’s generation.

As I showed in last week’s post (here), John Owen, a learned Puritan, agreed with this view.

One objection says Peter compared the coming destruction by fire to the flood in Noah’s day (2 Pet 3:5–7). The flood was universal and affected the entire planet, so the fire-judgment must also engulf the whole physical world. Since that fiery end of the “elements” has not happened, Peter spoke about something in our future, not God’s judgment of Israel in his generation.

Perhaps with a pun intended, a reader put it like this: The flood was the “literal deluge of every square kilometer of the world.” Therefore, Peter was not foretelling the “figurative bathing of fire in a few square kilometers of the world. Sorry, that doesn’t wash.”

In this post, I will respond to this logic by making a single point—Peter’s reference to the universal flood does not require a universal judgment by fire in his day of the Lord passage (2 Pet 3:1–13). I will use four men to make my case: Daniel, Jesus, Paul, and Peter himself.

Daniel and a Flood

Daniel used “a flood” as a picture of God’s judgment of Jerusalem and the temple in his seventy-weeks prophecy:

Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.… After the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood. (Dan 9:24, 26)

Peter knew Jesus had fulfilled parts of this prophecy through His death on the cross. He also knew Jerusalem (and the temple) would soon fall, so he—like Daniel—compared that event to a flood (2 Pet 3:5–7; cf. Dan 9:26).

The prophet does not mention the flood in Noah’s day, but I can’t imagine a local flood demolishing Jerusalem; her border “went up to the top of the mountain” (Josh 15:8). This imagery requires a flood like Noah’s to destroy “the city and sanctuary.”

Daniel used flood imagery to describe the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in Peter’s generation. Peter did, too.

Jesus and the Flood

Peter had heard Jesus use the flood metaphor. The Lord spoke about the kingdom coming in His generation (Luke 17:20; cp. Matt 16:27–28). He compared that coming to the flood judgment and God’s judgment of Sodom:

[The Son of Man] must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. (Luke 17:25–30)

Jesus used two previous judgments—one universal (the flood) and the other local (Sodom)—to describe the judgment coming in his generation. 

Peter had also heard Jesus’ Olivet Discourse in which He said the temple’s fall would end the Mosaic age and establish His presence with His people during the messianic age (Matt 24:1–3). The Lord used cosmic collapse imagery to describe these events (Matt 24:29). He also compared them to the flood in Noah’s day:

As the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. (Matt 24:37–39)

Jesus gave a solemn promise: “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place” (Matt 24:34).

Why wouldn’t Peter make the same comparisons? Like his Master, he used cosmic collapse imagery, the example of Sodom, and the universal flood to describe the Son of Man coming to judge the temple.

Paul and the Flood

In Hebrews, Paul links the coming of Christ, the shaking of heaven and earth, and the flood. He gives the timeframe for these events: “For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry” (Heb 10:37). He means the Lord would come in “a very, very little while.”^⁠2 The Apostle also describes the shaking this coming would cause—it would end the old Mosaic-age kingdom and establish the messianic-age kingdom:

See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. (Heb 12:25–28)

Paul used the flood to encourage his readers’ faith as they witnessed this transition. Remember, he says,

By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. (Heb 11:7)

Paul used the same images as Jesus when he spoke of the Lord’s coming and the age transition it would bring: cosmic collapse (the shaking of heaven and earth) and the universal flood. He said these things would happen in a “very, very little while” because the generation Jesus had specified was nearing its end (cf. Matt 24:34).

Paul was not thinking of universal destruction of the physical world; he was describing the collapse of the Mosaic-age “heavens and earth” (cf. Isa 51:15–16) and the start of the messianic (kingdom) age.

Peter and the Flood

Peter described the coming of the Lord to end the Mosaic age in the same way Daniel, Jesus, and Paul did. 

In his first letter, Peter linked salvation through Christ to the flood “in the days of Noah” (1 Pet 3:18–22). This salvation, he said, was “ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:5), and it would come on “the day of visitation” (1 Pet 2:12). 

After mentioning the flood, Peter said the day of judgment would come soon: God was “ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Pet 4:5). “The end of all things [was] at hand” (1 Pet 4:7). “The time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God” (1 Pet 4:17).

This judgment would bring the glorious new age. Therefore, Peter saw himself “as a fellow elder and witness to the sufferings of the Messiah and also a participant in the glory about to be revealed” (1 Pet 5:1 HCSB).

Noah’s salvation through the flood was a metaphor for things about to happen in Peter’s day.

The Apostle continues this theme in the second chapter of his second letter. He compared the coming judgment by fire to three previous judgments: 

For a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)—then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment. (2 Peter 2:3–9)

Peter’s soon-coming day of the Lord would be like (1) God’s judgment of wicked angels, (2) the flood judgment, and (3) the judgment of Sodom. The first occurred in heaven before God created man, the second was a universal historical event, and the last was a localized judgment. Yet all three served as metaphors of the judgment Peter had in mind.

Conclusion

Peter did not compare the day of the Lord to the flood because it would be universal. He, Daniel, Jesus, and Paul did so for reasons Milton Terry explains:

That great world-judgment [i.e., the flood] was not only the signal end of an old world, but it also ushered in a new era in the history of man. The family of Noah, the eight elect souls, who were delivered by the gracious interposition of God (comp. 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; Heb. 11:7), were a chosen remnant destined to open a new age, receive new commandments, and enter into covenant relations with God. In all these facts we recognize a type of the consummation of another and more historic age, when a wicked and adulterous generation were visited with overwhelming judgment, and their city and sanctuary were destroyed as with a flood (Matt. 24:15–22; comp. Dan. 9:26, 27). That unparalleled catastrophe of woe also marked the end of one age and the beginning of another, in which the “remnant according to the election of grace,” who recognized in Jesus Christ their Prince and Saviour, went forth in all the world to establish his kingdom of righteousness.^⁠3

Peter’s day of the Lord passage (2 Pet 3:1–13) is about God’s judgment that would soon fall on Jerusalem and the temple.

1. For a full-length account of this prophetic model, see Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020). It is available here. For a summary, see the free PDF here.
2. William Gouge, Commentary on Hebrews (1866; repr., Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1980), 999.
3. Milton S. Terry, Biblical Apocalyptics: A Study of the Most Notable Revelations of God and of Christ in the Canonical Scriptures (New York; Cincinnati: Eaton & Mains; Curts & Jennings, 1898), 65–66.