A person at all familiar with the phraseology of the Old Testament Scriptures knows that the dissolution of the Mosaic economy and the establishment of the Christian, is often spoken of as the removing of the old earth and heavens, and the creation of a new earth and new heavens.

(See Isa. lxv. 17, and lxvi. 22.) The period of the close of the one dispensation and the commencement of the other, is spoken of as "the last days," and "the end of the world," and is described as such a shaking of the earth and heavens, as should lead to the removal of the things which were shaken (Hag. ii. 6; Heb. xiv. 26, 27).’.......

There seems, therefore, to be Scripture warrant for understanding ‘things in heaven and things in earth’ in the sense indicated by Locke, as meaning Jew and Gentiles. It is possible, however, that the words point to a still wider comprehension and a more glorious consummation.

They may imply that the human race, separated from God and all holy beings, and divided by mutual enmity and alienation, was destined by the gracious purpose of God to be reclaimed, restored, and reunited under one common Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, to the one God and Father of mankind, and to all holy and happy beings in heaven.......

2 Pet. iii. 7, 10-12.---‘But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men . . . . But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burnt up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.’......


It must not be forgotten that St. Peter is speaking, not of a distant, but of an impending, catastrophe. The ‘last days’ were the days then present (1 Pet. i. 5, 20), and the scoffers are spoken of as actually existing (chap. iii. 5),---‘This they willingly are ignorant of,’ etc.


The imagery here employed by the apostle naturally suggests the idea of the total dissolution by fire of the whole substance and fabric of the material creation, not the earth only but the system to which it belongs; and this no doubt is the popular notion of the final consummation which is expected to terminate the present order of things.

A little reflection, however, and a better acquaintance with the symbolic language of prophecy, will be sufficient to modify such a conclusion, and to lead to an interpretation more in accordance with the analogy of similar descriptions in the prophetic writings.

First, it is evident on the face of the question that this universal conflagration, as it may be called, was regarded by the apostle as on the eve of taking place,---‘The end of all things is at hand’ (1 Pet. iv. 7). The consummation was so near that it is described as an event to be ‘looked for, and hastened unto’ (ver. 12.)

It follows, therefore, that it could not be the literal destruction or dissolution of the globe and the created universe concerning which the spirit of prophecy here speaks.

But that there was at the moment when this epistle was written an awful and almost immediate catastrophe impending; that the long-predicted ‘day of the Lord’ was actually at hand; that the day did come, both speedily and suddenly; that it came ‘as a thief in the night;’ that a fiery deluge of wrath and judgment overwhelmed the guilty land and nation of Israel, destroying and dissolving its earthly things and its heavenly things, that is to say, its temporal and spiritual institutions,---is a fact indelibly imprinted on the page of history.