Will the World End in a Great Ball of Fire?

WILL THE WORLD END IN A GREAT BALL OF FIRE?

Below is the 40th of multiple excerpts from The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell. "ESCHATOLOGY [END TIMES DOCTRINE] OF ST. PETER. "2 Pet. iii. 7, 10-[13] [2 Pet. 3:7, 10-13].---‘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 which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements [Greek: stoicheia, meaning 'rudiments,' 'principles,' 'fundamental principles,' 'elementary forms,' see Gal. 4:3, 4:9; Col. 2:8, 2:20; Heb. 5:12] 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 [conduct] 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 [Isaiah 65:17, 66:22] wherein dwelleth righteousness.’ "The imagery here employed by the apostle [Peter] 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 [1 Pet. 4:7]). The consummation was so near that it is described as an event to be ‘looked for, and hastened unto’ (ver. 12 [2 Pet 4:12]). 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 [circa A.D. 68] 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 [in A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple]; 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 [Matthew 23:31-26], 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 [as recorded by the 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus]. The time for the fulfillment of these predictions was now come, and when the apostle wrote it was to declare that it was the ‘last time,’ and the very taunts of the scoffers were verifying the fact [2 Peter 3:3]. We are therefore brought to the inevitable conclusion that it was the final catastrophe of Judea and Jerusalem, predicted by our Lord in His [apocalyptic] prophecy on the Mount of Olives [Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21] and so frequently referred to by the apostles, to which St. Peter alludes in [his use of] the symbolic imagery which seems to imply the dissolution of the material universe. "Secondly, we must interpret these symbols according to the analogy of Scripture. The language of prophecy is the language of poetry, and is not to be taken in a strictly literal sense. Happily there is no lack of parallel descriptions in the ancient prophets, and there is scarcely a figure here used by St. Peter of which we may not find examples in the Old Testament [Isaiah 13:13, 51:6; Joel 2:10, 3:16; Haggai 2:6, 2:21], and thus be furnished with a key to the meaning of like symbols in the New [Matt. 24:29-31, Mark 13:24-27, Luke 21:25-28, Hebrews 12:26-27]."

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