The New Testament and the Flood
April 25, 2008 by Vicki
Here is an outstanding article on 2 Peter entitled The New Testament and the Flood from the website of Lambert Dolphin.. my thanks to pjmiller of Sola Dei Gloria for posting a different article that lead me to this website.
from the article:
There are many today who consider the early chapters of Genesis to be “historical myth.” The story of Creation and the Flood didn’t really happen–it is not a part of mankind’s actual history they tell us. It is a legend or a story derived from various sources but these events never took place.
Jesus did not hold to this view. He frequently quoted Genesis, speaking from it with the same regard and authority He gave to all the rest of Scripture. The Apostles of Christ also held to the authority of the Old Testament as God’s Word, as historically accurate. The Apostle Peter devotes a good portion of his second Epistle to a warning concerning false teachers and skeptics who distort or deny the fact that God has intervened radically in human history will do so again in the near future.
The late William Barclay offers the following comments on Peter’s second letter which deals with the general subject of false teaching, and brings forth a number of Old Testament illustrations, including the Flood of Noah.
THE PASTOR’S CARE
It is for this reason that I intend constantly to remind You of these things, although you already know them, and although you are ready firmly established in the truth which you possess. I think it is right, so long as I am in this tent, to rouse you by reminding you, for I know that the time to put off my tent is coming soon, as indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has told me. Yes, and I will make it my endeavor to see to it that after my departure you will constantly remember these things. (2 Peter 1:12-15)
Here speaks the pastor’s care. In this passage Peter shows us two things about preaching and teaching. First, preaching is very often reminding a man of what he already knows. It is the bringing back to his memory that truth which he has forgotten, or at which he refuses to look, or whose meaning he has not fully appreciated. Second, Peter is going to go on to uncompromising rebuke and warning, but he begins with something very like a compliment. He says that his people already possess the truth and are firmly established in it. Always a preacher, a teacher or a parent will achieve more by encouragement than by scolding. We do more to reform people and to keep them safe by, as it were, putting them on their honour than by flaying them with invective. Peter was wise enough to know that the first essential to make men listen is to show that we believe in them.
link to rest of article:
