Main news for 10 December 2020

The image of the destruction of the world, briefly, but explicitly described by Pierre, impresses of course. Although, it is necessary to recognize, there is nothing completely really new or unexpected in it: all the yahviste and of the early Christian apocalypse looks at the end of time approximately in the same way. And the Savior Himself said quite a lot of time when the day of Yahweh, the Day of Judgment (" the Day of the Lord ") will come, as a thief in the night. The most interesting here, is probably this accent on the surprise of the event, which breaks the usual train of things.

According to the context of the statement, Peter addresses those of his coreligionists, to whom began to seem that with the coming of the Messiah, nothing in the world has changed, it remained the same as it was, and no Kingdom, about which Jesus said it was “near” was in the world, and hasn’t be. Apparently, it seemed to them that the Kingdom will come when history will end, and they probably sought in the world signs of this end, and were saddened because they could find nothing consolating for themselves. The apostle points out the fact that the Kingdom enters into the world not because the history ends; it enters into the world through the rupture of history.

It can’t be otherwise: because the Kingdom of Jesus, according to His own words "is not of this world", it can’t come in the course and consequently of the natural historical process. At the moment of the triumph of the Kingdom and the transformation of the world, the history does not end, but is interrupted. And that is why the Judgment Day comes, "as a thief in the night", when nobody waits for it. And to those who wait, do not try to determine the proximity of that day by any external features.

Of course, any tension of the historic development, any period of trouble increase in a certain sense the probability of the rupture of history, but only in the sense, in which any increase of load on any structure increases the probability of its destruction. Even the most serious social, technological or natural disasters can’t by themselves witness about the proximity of the Judgment Day, although each of such a disaster, in principle, can become its precursor. And that is why Peter is able to give to the one waiting for this day only an advice. The very same, that the Savior Himself gave His followers.