II Peter 3:4

(Compare Psa 10:11; Psa 73:11.) Presumptuous skepticism and lawless lust, setting nature and its so-called laws above the God of nature and revelation, and arguing from the past continuity of nature's phenomena that there can be no future interruption to them, was the sin of the antediluvians, and shall be that of the scoffers in the last days. Where--implying that it ought to have taken place before this, if ever it was to take place, but that it never will. the promise--which you, believers, are so continually looking for the fulfilment of (Pe2 3:13). What becomes of the promise which you talk so much of? his--Christ's; the subject of prophecy from the earliest days. the fathers--to whom the promise was made, and who rested all their hopes on it. all things--in the natural world; skeptics look not beyond this. as they were--continue as they do; as we see them to continue. From the time of the promise of Christ's coming as Saviour and King being given to the fathers, down to the present time, all things continue, and have continued, as they now are, from "the beginning of creation." The "scoffers" here are not necessarily atheists, nor do they maintain that the world existed from eternity. They are willing to recognize a God, but not the God of revelation. They reason from seeming delay against the fulfilment of God's word at all.

The apostle drawing towards the conclusion of his second epistle, begins this last chapter with repeating the account of his design and scope in writing a second time to them (Pe2 3:1-2). II. He proceeds to mention one thing that induced him to write this second epistle, namely, the coming of scoffers, whom he describes (Pe2 3:3-7). III. He instructs and establishes them in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to judgment (Pe2 3:8-10). IV. He sets forth the use and improvement which Christians ought to make of Christ's second coming, and that dissolution and renovation of things which will accompany that solemn coming of our Lord (Pe2 3:11-18).

3:4 From before the times of our ancestors: The false teachers were probably claiming that, for all of God’s promises to intervene in history, things had not really changed and never would.