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Let us now see what the Apostle Peter predicted concerning this
judgment. "There shall come," he says, "in the last days
scoffers. ...Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for
new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." There
is nothing said here about the resurrection of the dead, but enough
certainly regarding the destruction of this world. And by his
reference to the deluge he seems as it were to suggest to us how far we
should believe the ruin of the world will extend in the end of the
world. For he says that the world which then was perished, and not
only the earth itself, but also the heavens, by which we understand
the air, the place and room of which was occupied by the water.
Therefore the whole, or almost the whole, of the gusty atmosphere
(which he calls heaven, or rather the heavens, meaning the earth's
atmosphere, and not the upper air in which sun, moon, and stars are
set) was turned into moisture, and in this way perished together with
the earth, whose former appearance had been destroyed by the deluge.
"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." Therefore the heavens and the earth, or
the world which was preserved from the water to stand in place of that
world which perished in the flood, is itself reserved to fire at last
in the day of the judgment and perdition of ungodly men. He does not
hesitate to affirm that in this great change men also shall perish:
their nature, however, shall notwithstanding continue, though in
eternal punishments. Some one will perhaps put the question, If
after judgment is pronounced the world itself is to burn, where shall
the saints be during the conflagration, and before it is replaced by a
new heavens and a new earth, since somewhere they must be, because
they have material bodies? We may reply that they shall be in the
upper regions into which the flame of that conflagration shall not
ascend, as neither did the water of the flood; for they shall have
such bodies that they shall be wherever they wish. Moreover, when
they have become immortal and incorruptible, they shall not greatly
dread the blaze of that conflagration, as the corruptible and mortal
bodies of the three men were able to live unhurt in the blazing
furnace.
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