The Strand Study Bible

II PETER Written From Babylon (Rome) 2:20 The key word here is “ if .” The construction of the original Greek points to a contrary-to-the-fact premise. In other words, what Peter is saying here is, “ If these false teachers’ claims to salvation were true (they’re not, but if they were), then why are these false teachers continually overcome by the most despicable sins? ( I Jn 3:9 b ) NOTE - There are some post-Jewish MESSIANIC movements ( Gal 3:1-3 ) that view this passage as an indication that believers can lose their salvation ( the latter end is worse ). They cannot. This passage is referring to unbelievers, not believers. Nowhere in Scripture does God refer to believers as “dogs” (Deut 23:17-18) and “pigs” (vs 22) (Jn 10:27-29 and Mt 15:26). This entire chapter is speaking about false teachers (vs 1) who twist the truth in order to justify their system of belief. 3:3 Peter predicted in the last days before Jesus’ return that men ( scoffers ) would mock the existence of God, His promises, and the fact of a universal Flood (vs 6) ( Psa 104:6-9 and Job 22:16 ). Many years of educational brainwashing by self-serving intellectuals in the mythology of evolutionary theory, have numbed many Americans to the clear testimony of Scripture. Interestingly enough, these are the same self-promoting intellectuals that tell us that the “theory” of evolution is now a fact. Phillip E. Johnson, a Harvard and University of Chicago graduate who taught law for thirty years at the University of California at Berkeley, in Defeating Darwinism , recorded for us the 1995 “official” position of the American National Association of Biology Teachers. The “official” position states: 2108 Or, in the words of the famous evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson, “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” 2 Yet despite the fact that all of the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin ( Job 26:7 ), many a talented (yet spiritually deceived) men have reached the conclusion that anyone who believes in God and the Biblical account of Creation and the Flood is surely beyond the reach of common sense. Atheist George H. Smith proudly boasted: Christian theism must be rejected by any person with even a shred of respect for reason... 3 These dogmatic intellectuals have now come to the place where they worship their own intelligence and beg you to do the same lest you appear to have no intelligence at all. Richard Dawkins, a self-promoting intellectual and admittedly the world’s most prominent living atheist, said in The God Delusion , notes: But atheists are a lot more numerous, especially among the educated elite... 4 To Dawkins and men like him, such as Christopher Hitchen ( God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything ), Sam Harris ( The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation ), and Daniel Dennett ( Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon ), the reason people believe in God is because they are irrational (without reasoning abilities) and uneducated. However, Daniel Taylor in Letters to My Children notes: Everyone claims their “rights” these days, and one of those is the right to be stupid. A lot of people exercise that right, including smart people with a lot of education. 5 Peter warned us that in the last days scoffers would come. Never before have we seen what we are seeing now, which is a widespread declaration of “intellectual pride.” Prominent atheists now want to be called “brights,” because “brights” are the intelligent people who don’t fall for silly superstitions like Santa Clause –or God. Dinesh D’Souza in What’s So Great About Christianity notes: The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

Never before have we seen what we are seeing now, which is what Dawkins terms a widespread assertion of “atheist pride.” Prominent atheists are staging a hugh “coming out” party. Two of them, American philosopher Daniel Dennett and British biologist Richard Dawkins, published articles calling on fellow unbelievers to give up the term “atheist,” as the term, they suggested, has such negative connotations. Their alternative? Dennett and Dawkins want to be called “brights.” Yes, “brights,” as in “I am bright.” Dawkins defines a bright as one who espouses “a worldview that is free of supernaturalism and mysticism.” According to Dennett, “We brights don’t believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny–or God.” Dennetts implication is clear: Brights are the smart people who don’t fall for silly superstitions. 6

A reasonable person, however, might wonder why the atheists spend so much time thinking about God if He doesn’t exist… Solomon, the most educated man of his day, said of men like Dawkins in Proverbs 26:12: “ Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.” Peter warned us that in the last days scoffers would come. Indeed they have. WilliamM. Smith, in Bible History ofWorldGovernment , accurately described these kinds of self-serving intellectuals when he noted:

The mind of unregenerate man is reluctant to accept the plain and simple revelation of God as to the manner of the earth’s beginning. Such men claim that it is difficult for them to believe in the manner of creation described in the Bible. They must invent some manner more acceptable to their carnal minds. Instantaneous creation is obnoxious to them, for it makes God too real. A gradual process that puts God far away, or eliminates Him altogether, suits them better. 7

It is fair to note, however, that not every intellectual worships his own intelligence. Dr. Henry F. Schaefer III, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, the third most quoted chemist in the world, said at a lecture that he gave at the University of Colorado in 1994: