2 Peter 3:13

13. Nevertheless Our hopes do not, like the scoffers’, go down with the old earth; our faith looks for the new.

According to his promise God’s one great promise of eternal life and glory for the elect in Christ. All the prophecies of the Old Testament presuppose it; and the New Testament is one great expression of it. The phraseology, only, of Isaiah 65:17, is used here to describe a greater renewal than Isaiah was enabled explicitly to express.

New heavens and a new earth Compare notes on Revelation 21:1. The language of St. John would seem to imply that the new is not to be made out of the substance of the old, but that it is to be wholly a new sphere. And the phraseology of Peter might naturally be construed in the same way. We might then suppose (according to our note on 1 Thessalonians 4:17) that the new heavens and earth were the sphere formed of a portion of the departed energies of the old universe crystallized into a new and glorious world. And the second advent may take place when the renewed sphere corresponding to our earth is, by such final crystallization, completed. Yet, on the other hand, the old traditions generally held that the new would be simply a transformation of the old, and such might seem the natural, but not necessary, impression derived from Paul’s language, Romans 8:18-23, where see note. A renovation of the same substance may be indicated by Peter’s analogy of the flood, (2 Peter 3:6,) but that seems rather adduced only as instance of a supernatural break of the ordinary course of events, and is applicable to either view.

On these points astronomy neither aids nor impedes us much. If we suppose a new sphere made from the old energies, such an event need not be supposed ever yet, in the physical history of the universe, to have been completed, at least within reach of the astronomer’s glass. New stars have been supposed to be observed to come into existence, but that supposition was probably the result of inaccurate observation. Stars have been seen apparently in conflagration; so that a burning world is no unsupposable thing. Stars have been seen for a while in apparent conflagration, and then resuming a natural appearance; so that a burned and renewed world is not, astronomically, unthinkable. To the eye of the astronomer the conflagration of a star may look accidental, like the burning of a house. But to the Omniscient eye there is no accident. Every particle of the most confused masses is not only ruled by law, but taken into the divine plan. Pope has well said,

“All nature is but art unknown to thee,

All chance, direction which thou canst not see.”

If human art can by divine provision overlay the potter’s clay with a most beautiful enamel, surely divine art can enamel the earth, which has passed through the divine furnace, with a sublime perfection, fitting it for the dwelling-place of righteousness.