Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Subject: Re: II Peter true or false?
From: bthurman@uncavx.unca.edu
Date: 12 Sep 92 10:28:18 -0500
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
Nntp-Posting-User: bthurman

As with II Timothy, do not a swarm of academics depreciate, or denigrate, II
Peter as pseudepigraphical?  Isn't one major allegation that no Galilaean
fisherman would ever use such correct, elaborate rhetorical language? 
Nevertheless, might not one writing in a somewhat less familiar language try
hard to get the most expert personal and written help available?  Don't
students who are crude in German, for example, try to adapt entire eloquent
sentences out of a Satzlexicon and the like?
Don't too many academics use the term 'apocalyptic' to get rid of spiritual
challenges, when they don't want to take pains to sift through revelatory
subject matter, take pains with it, and pray about it?  What are some spiritual
challenges in II Peter? (What problems other than IMMINENCE? Isn't immanence a
theological property of godhead?)
Does not II Peter offer a spiritual challenge on 'the coming of the kingdom',
on the 'keys of the kingdom' and on 'the paradise of God'?
Wouldn't some wicked spiritual forces like for you to think that the life of
current existence (saeculum, aion enestos) offers all the 'kingdom' that God
has in store?  Does not II Peter 1,16-18 make it crystal clear that the
transfiguration (metamorphosis of Matthew 17, Mark 9) was meant as a preview,
an experience in advance, of the second coming (parousia)?  How could one to
whom this point seems clear ever think that 'it's all past'?
As for the keys of the kingdom, does any other major figure ever present a list
of points with which all must comply -- the steps of a process that must be
fulfilled -- in order to gain an entrance into that future, everlasting
kingdom?  Does not II Peter 1,5-11 suggest an extraordinarily clear set of
instructions on how to enter the kingdom?  Would this not be exactly what the
Master promised the very apostle named Peter?  Would enemies of the kingdom not
have a major stake in defeating such vital information?
What about 'the third heaven, the paradise of God' of which the Apostle Paul
spoke to the Corinthian congregation?  Although some stress the 'up', that's
not really the term used, is it? Did Paul not really use a term that just meant
'caught away' or 'snatched'?  Don't those who pop off about 'the three heavens'
or 'the seven heavens' usually talk through their hats without on iota of
documentation?  Doesn't II Peter 3 clearly delineate, or mark off, a set of
three heavens in succession?  Do not they all concern this planet?  Are not all
three very clearcut time associations?  Is not the scene of the first that
before the flood, the antediluvian world?  Was there not a heaven compacted out
of water and amidst water?  Was not THE WORLD THAT THEN WAS overflowed with
water and perished?  Is not the second set what prevails now?  Does II Peter
not affirm that the heavens and earth that now are as held in storage for fire,
by the same word (logos)?  Is not the third time-place set the true new world
for which Christians yearn?  Is it not the new heaven and new earth in which
righteousness make its home?  How could this be already fulfilled?
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