Now, you know you can’t keep God from loving you. You can’t keep it from raining. And you can’t keep the sun from shining. But you can get out of the rain and you can get out of the sunshine. You can’t keep God from loving you, but you can put up an umbrella of indifference, an umbrella of sin, an umbrella of rebellion, and you won’t experience it, but he loves you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to Through the Bible. That’s what our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, has to say about the great news that nothing can separate you and me from the love of God. Isn’t that an encouragement? You know, we’ve got a fantastic study of God’s Word ahead of us, so stay with us for the conclusion of the New Testament book of 2 Peter. Now, as you grab your copy of God’s Word and you find your seat on the Bible bus, I’m especially grateful to have Greg here in the studio so that we can tell you about a trip that I took recently to Liberia, Africa.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, and I’m especially grateful because I get to sort of turn the tables and be a little more of the host and say, Steve, you went on this trip to Liberia. Tell us about it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, first of all, even getting there, I mean, the Reader’s Digest version of this is, and we talked about this before, another listener who was unaffiliated with the program is listeninginnevada.com. I think he’s in Henderson, and he decided to call us and say, hey, I’m working with a ministry that’s involved in Liberia, and I think that they can use through the Bible in their ministry. Fast forward, one media player goes out, then 25, then 50, then 200, and then we show up. And they have out of this, you know, these little media players going in a country that doesn’t have usable Internet. I know I was there. Yes, you were there. Even though I was paying for it, after about 3 in the morning, It’s just choked.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s just not there.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s not there because seven people are on it instead of the four that were supposed to be on earlier. So anyway, so very difficult place, roads, infrastructure, all of that. In fact, I traveled with Ray Allery, who’s a longtime career missionary, spent a couple of decades in Africa living. And he said that Liberia in its current state was like what Africa was 20 years ago. Wow. Just in a time warp. But anyway, back to the people. We were there for a two-day conference, one day with the women and one day with the men. And I’m thinking, okay, normally I’m like, okay, there’s going to be 50 or something there. And they had women there the first day, and I think the number was over 250 women that were there. Wow. I just love seeing other cultures and the way they praise God and sing, but that’s an aside. It is such an encouragement from what the churches that I’m involved in that still sing and praise God, but it is at a different level when you see it in places like Liberia. And then just hearing the testimonies of those women and how those media players have impacted them, and really the leaders were the ones that were talking about it, and the stories that they shared about how – Hearing God’s word faithfully taught in a systematic way was having a massive impact on their own families. Yes. I mean, the more we’ve said this before, the more different we are from different parts of the world, the more together or we face similar struggles. You know, we’re believers. There’s nothing we want in our hearts than to see our kids walking with the Lord. Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, speaking of media players, you have to tell the story that I’ve heard you tell many times. And I love it about the the group of people that went after. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I know. I’m still here. So the women’s day finishes. I’m outside talking to these these kids that are like between eight and 12 years old. And I hear this this rumbling almost like Buffalo. And I turn around in the compound and about 50 yards away. About 100 of these 250 women are running across this open field towards this area where I knew that Ray and Greg were – or not Greg, Dave. I was with you in prayer. Yes, you were, who had media players. And what happened was it was like a contagion. People – heard these women heard that they were giving out media players and they were literally running across the courtyard and it was in that moment that I realized okay these media players are great they’re they’re useful but we’ve got to get a better solution and we’re working on that with our app yes and again you got a country with no internet people that are very poor yet all of them have smartphones very few iPhones everyone’s got an Android phone and they’re relatively inexpensive and we’re working on ways to get through the Bible for these folks and in a media player format that resides on their android phone and we’re making progress in that way and i can hardly wait to see how that’s going to blow up this home group ministry this radio ministry i can go on and on there was and that was not even plus the men’s day that happened after that the testimonies people there’s a guy that we picked up on the way in who was one of the leaders who lost his son just the week earlier and his son was like 13 and death is much closer to these folks because they don’t have medical care. They don’t have life expectancy like we do, which there is like in the late 30s. And so the need for the gospel is great there, and we’re seeing the Holy Spirit move in such significant ways. Wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, if you know Steve like I do, he wishes he had another hour to tell you all about this. Unfortunately, I’m playing the host today, and we are out of time, Steve. But I will say we have a great newsletter article written by Ray Allery. Please, if you don’t get our newsletter, you can go online or call 1-800-65-BIBLE and sign up for it. Steve, can you pray for our program today?
SPEAKER 03 :
Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless the ministry as it goes out today in the English language, but also in Liberia, and that you would continue to bless that ministry and provide for it and bring many people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
SPEAKER 1 :
Amen.
SPEAKER 03 :
Here’s our final study of 2 Peter on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
SPEAKER 01 :
We come back to this final study here in 2 Peter. And what we have here is the world that was. We’ve seen that destroyed by water. The world that is. The one that we’re living in today is likewise to be destroyed. And the words that Peter uses sound very much like an atomic explosion. It looks as if the Lord Jesus will untie these little atoms. They call it atomic fission today. A broken end of this little fella contains an abundance of energy, and it all is done with great heat and a great sound. And that’s the word that Simon Peter uses, by the way. Now, again, let me drop back and pick up verse 9, and he makes it very clear. that he’s not trying to use scare tactics with us at all, that one day with the Lord’s a thousand years and a thousand years one day. It’s coming, even if the Lord took the church out of the world today, would still be a thousand and seven years before this would take place. But we don’t know when he’s going to take the church out. This notion of trying to gear Israel into the church is a big mistake. The fact Israel’s in the land or not in the land, whether they win or lose, whether they are put out of that land, will have nothing in the world to do as far as the rapture of the church is concerned. It will come according to God’s program. And I don’t think we can hasten the day, and I don’t think you can delay it one whit. God’s running this thing, friends, and he just hasn’t told us. He’s told us to look for it. It’s imminent, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. So he says, verse 8, “…but, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” But notice, the Lord is not slack concerning His promise. As some men count slackness, He’s long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish. but that all should come to repentance. Now, he’s long-suffering, and he’s not rushing things. After all, he’s got eternity ahead of him. He’s had eternity back of him. He doesn’t need to worry about time. A thousand years, one day, one day is a thousand years. But the thing is, it’s inevitable. It is coming. It will descend upon the earth someday. And now God is giving man everywhere an opportunity. And that’s the reason we want to get the Word out. It’s the only thing that can change hearts and lives. All this little novelty stuff today and all the gimmicks and all of this mass hysteria today, it’s no good, friends. The Word needs to go out. Only the Word of God. being absolutely born again, not a corruptible seed, but incorruptible, a Word of God that liveth and abideth forever.” Now, you know you can’t keep God from loving you. I’ve said that many times. You can’t keep it from raining and you can’t keep the sun from shining. But you can get out of the rain and you can get out of the sunshine. You can’t keep God from loving you, but you can put up an umbrella of indifference, an umbrella of sin, an umbrella of rebellion, and you won’t experience it, but he loves you. And the story comes to us out of Greek mythology, and it illustrates a point, and that’s all we’re interested in. It concerns a young man who had a very wonderful and godly mother, and he fell in love with a very ungodly girl. And this girl, in all of her sin, she hated the boy’s mother because she couldn’t bear even being in her presence. And it was not because actually the mother rebuked her, but her very character and her very presence was a rebuke to the girl. And the boy was so desperately in love with this girl, for she was beautiful and he just wouldn’t give her up. He pleaded with her to marry him, and she said, only on one condition, you must cut out your mother’s heart and bring it to me. Well, this boy was so madly in love and so desperate that he descended to that low plane of committing this diabolical deed. He killed his mother, cut out her heart, and he was taking it to the girl. But on the way, he stumbled and fell, and the heart spoke out to him. And said, my son, did you hurt yourself? May I say to you, friends, you can slap God in the face. You can turn your back on him. You can blaspheme him. You can treat him anyway. But you cannot keep him from wanting to save you. You can’t keep him from loving you. For he provided a savior, gave his son to die. And Jesus today wants to save you. He wants to, and he will save you if you’ll turn to him and receive the salvation that he offers in Jesus Christ. Friends, things are not going to continue as they are now. Oh, I know the monotony of life today, the ennui of it all. Well, it’s coming to an end. And judgment will come. You and I are living in a world moving to judgment. Well, what about the world that will be? Well, let me keep reading here. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise. Now, there is some argument as whether this takes place at the coming of Christ to establish his kingdom or at the end. And I’m convinced that the day of the Lord opens with the great tribulation. And it concludes with the 1,000-year reign of Christ, that brief rebellion of Satan and his angels, and then the judgment of the great white throne, and then in Revelation you have coming into view the new heavens and the new earth. So I believe that that’s where you have to fit it in, so that you have here this statement. He says, But the day of the Lord will come as the thief in the night in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, that swish. Have you listened to an atom bomb go off? You remember a few years ago when they were experimenting with them and we could see and hear them on television? And the elements shall melt with fervent heat. Now, you see that you can get rid of matter. The little building blocks melt. The stoica, which is a better word than Adam, because Adam means something you can’t cut. And you can cut the little Adam because they’ve taken him apart today. And the word melt just means that it gradually wastes away. In other words, this earth that we live in will be just like a great atomic explosion. I think it will go into nothing. I’ve always felt that the Lord probably is going to turn the little atoms wrong side out and use the other side of them for a while. And when he does that, they’ll never be able to untie them again. Now the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The earth also and the works that are in it shall be burned up. Now, that will take care of the water. When an atom bomb is let out over water, why, it takes the two elements that are there, hydrogen and oxygen, and both of them are gases that can be very explosive. Firemen tell us that there are certain kinds of fires they go to today that when they put water on it, it just helps the fire along. and they have to use certain other kind of chemicals today. Well, the works that are in it shall be burned up, seeing then in view of this. You see, the scoffer said at the beginning, all things continue as they have from the beginning. But his great fallacy is not knowing the past. And yet it’s the evolutionist that has made so much of the fact there’s been a great catastrophe in the past. These great mountains out here in the West, the high Sierras, they were thrown up there by some great convulsion of nature. It happened sometime in the past. It was a judgment of God, if you please. Now, that is the thing that he’s talking about here. And this day of the Lord is very familiar, I trust, to those of you who follow now the program. We’ve seen the prophets used it. The Lord Jesus has used it. All the writers in the New Testament use it. The day of the Lord is a technical term. It begins in darkness, as the Old Testament prophets said. Begins with the great tribulation. And then it ends with this great atomic explosion, this great judgment of the earth by being dissolved by fire. And between these two great events, You have the great tribulation period, the coming of Christ to the earth to establish his kingdom, the millennial kingdom, the brief release of Satan and that rebellion then, and then his final confinement and the great white throne judgment of the lost. Then there comes into view the new heavens and the new earth. And that’s what we have here. Now he says in verse 11, “…seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness? Now, in view of the fact of what has happened, what is going to happen, and what God is going to do in the future, then you and I ought not to be standing on the sidelines twiddling our thumbs today and maybe indulging in criticism. It’s so easy as a Christian to criticize others. But specifically, what are you doing today to get out the Word of God? That’s the important question, as I see it, in this hour for every Christian, every church, every pastor. Every person sitting in a pew needs to ask the question. I’m not here to sit and judge, sit judgment on the preacher. I’m not here to judge other Christians. I’m here to get the Word of God out, to do something positive. Now, what am I doing in this connection? Well, listen to him. Looking far and hasting to the coming of the day of God, Now, that day is coming. Now, he’s writing to the diaspora, Jews scattered abroad. He says, though the rapture is going to take believers out of the world, that the things the Old Testament prophets talked about, the kingdom coming on the earth and the great judgment that will take place before the kingdom comes on, it’s coming, looking for and hasting to the coming of the day of God in which the heavens burst. Being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. Now, this is a remarkable statement. And may I say to you, it’s one of the most remarkable statements that you could possibly have from a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. And I don’t imagine that he figured out that the water of that sea where he fished would burn. He didn’t believe that all of this could be dissolved and melt. And these elements, again, your building blocks, what we call atoms today, that the building blocks of the universe, Why, they are to be absolutely melted. Untied is the word. The Greek word is luo. That is unloosed, untied. That is that energy that’s there today. And man, by doing that, has been able to produce a little bomb that can do tremendous wonders. And today, men are trying to release that energy because you and I are living in an earth today that it’s running out of material. God stocked this earth. He put plenty of oil in it when he made it. He put plenty of groceries here. It was like a great supermarket. Men came and they prostituted this earth. They have polluted this earth. And they are beginning to use up all that God put in the pantry and all that God put in the filling station. Now they become an alarm. But this tremendous potential today of energy that’s in the little atom. Well, I tell you, when he destroys this earth someday, it’s going to be a tremendous thing. Now listen to him. He comes to that which is ahead. Just because the earth will be dissolved doesn’t mean he’s through with the earth. Just as in the past the earth was judged, it will be judged in the future. But the earth will go on as such. Listen to him now, verse 13. Nevertheless, we… According to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which dwelleth righteousness. Now, I don’t have time to stay with this particular truth here, an earth in which righteousness dwells. Now, righteousness does not dwell in this earth today. It’s not at home in this earth. It’s not at home in Washington. It’s not at home in any of the capitals of the world. It’s not at home in your hometown. And it’s not in home where you live today. Righteousness will dwell in the new earth, in the new heavens. Now, you and I live in a world that Shakespeare described his time as this. The times are out of joint. That was in Hamlet. Well, at times they’re out of joint. Now, some of the poets have waxed rather eloquent and soared to the heights, and I think have misrepresented things. For instance, Browning in Pippa’s Passage, he says, “…the lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn. God’s in his heaven, and all is right with the world.” Well, I don’t know. The lark is on the wing. The snail’s on the thorn. In fact, he’s in my backyard. And God’s in his heaven. But things are not right in the world today. And I’m glad there’s another world, a new heaven and a new earth that are coming on. It’s going to be wonderful. I’ve always enjoyed trading my old car in, getting a new model, you see. And God has a new model coming on of the earth. And I’ll be glad when it arrives. It’ll be a wonderful earth because it’s going to be an earth in which actually righteousness will dwell. That’s the thing that characterizes it. Now he says in verse 14 here, and we come now to the admonition that he gives to believers. What is that? “‘Wherefore, beloved, seeing that we look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace without spot and blameless.'” In other words, we’re to live a holy life down here. That means a life separated under God. And friends, after all, what is really worthwhile in this earth today? What are your goals? Are you a productive Christian today moving to a worthwhile goal? Well, somebody says, I want to raise my family. That’s worthwhile. Somebody says, I want to make a good living for my family and educate my children. That’s worthwhile. These things are worthwhile, but really, what is the object of your life? Is it to live for God, and if you live for God today, all of these secondary issues, I believe, will take care of themselves. And he says, “…an account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation.” Patient waiting is mental adjustment to the present world situation. We don’t need to be alarmed today. God’s sin is heaven. And things are not right in the world, but he’s going to make them right someday. And this is the message of the New Testament. And not only that, Paul wrote of this. Even as our beloved brother Paul, also according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you, and also in all his epistles. Speaking them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable rest as they do also the other scriptures under their own destruction. Peter says that Paul wrote scripture, but some of them didn’t quite admit it. And he says that Paul wrote of truth and depth. In my book, Simon Peter did pretty well himself here. Now, will you notice? Ye therefore, beloved, seeing that ye know these things There’s something we’re to know today, friends. Don’t be a lazy Christian, not learning the Word of God. There’s no little gimmick today. There’s no little course you can take in a week. There is no little program that you can go through that’s going to change and revolutionize your life. There’s no easy way. The way to do is to know the Word of God, not a few little verses of Scripture that you throw about and kick about like a football. He says you know these things. Before, beware lest ye also being led away with the error of the wicked fall from your own steadfastness. Be a steadfast Christian. But now here is the message. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever. Amen. Oh, to know him, friends. You know what we need? We mutter and sputter. We fume and we spurt. We mumble and grumble. Our feelings get hurt. We can’t understand things. Our vision grows dim. But all that we need is a moment with him. And not just a moment, friends, but a whole eternity with Jesus Christ. Until next time, when we go back to the Old Testament to Obadiah, may God richly bless you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that was a great conclusion to our study of 2 Peter. If you’re not ready to leave this amazing little book yet, all of our studies in 2 Peter are available in our app or at ttb.org. And if you want to go deeper, you should look at the Bible Companion for this and do a small group Bible study in your neighborhood or with some friends. Now, as you seek to know the Lord through His Word, we’d like to help. You can check out our entire library of resources available at ttb.org, or if we can help you find something in particular, just call us, 1-800-65-BIBLE is the number. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I’ll be here saving a seat on the Bible bus just for you.
SPEAKER 02 :
All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.
SPEAKER 03 :
Our story on the Bible Bus today is just one step in a five-year journey through the entire Word of God. Come along for the ride, and you’ll study both the Old Testament and New Testament, discovering God’s great redemption story. Is this your story too?
