Big Picture: Returning to a topic first introduced in 1:16–21, Peter encourages his readers to remember the teaching of the Lord and the prophets, who clearly predicted the Lord’s coming and the day of judgment. The false teachers deny this coming intervention, deliberately forgetting that God has directly intervened before in creation and the flood. Christians who live in the light of that anticipated judgment and consummation understand that it shapes how we think and live right now.

1. Scoffers doubt the final day (1-7)

• The false teachers object that God set the world in motion but did not intervene cosmologically thereafter. But such a view does not account for the flood, which involved a cataclysm for the entire world.
• History will end with a great conflagration, when the present heavens and earth will be burned, and the ungodly will be judged.

2. God’s patience with sinners before the final day (8-10)

• God’s timing is not ours.
• God has a positive purpose in delaying Jesus’ return: he wants everyone to come to repentance.
• When Jesus does return at the end, his return will be sudden, unmistakable, and cataclysmic. It will mark the end of the universe as we know it.

3. Living righteously in light of the final day (11–18)

• Christians who live in the light of that anticipated judgment and consummation understand that it shapes how we think and live right now.