Remember the Prophets and Apostles: The Scoffers’ Question

Peter begins the final chapter with the same strategy he used before: stir up sincere minds by remembrance. This time the memory has two voices—the holy prophets and the apostles of the Lord and Saviour. The church is to stand inside the whole revealed story while scoffers ask, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Their argument sounds empirical: generations have died and the world seems to continue as it always has. Peter does not answer by calculating a date. He challenges the assumption that history has always been closed to divine intervention. Creation and the Flood become his counterexamples in the next verses. The close parallel with Jude’s warning about last-time scoffers is another place where the two letters’ literary relationship becomes impossible to miss.