Introduction: Building on the Covenant Creation of Sinai
In Part 1 we established that the “heavens and earth” created at Sinai (Isaiah 51:15-16; Deuteronomy 32:6) and destined to pass away in AD 70 are the consistent referent to the “heavens and earth” in Psalm 102, Hebrews 1 and 12, and Revelation 21. Part 2 develops the same theme in 2 Peter. Peter is not speaking of a distant physical end of the material cosmos. He describes the imminent judgment upon the Old Covenant world—the very order God sovereignly “made,” “created,” and “formed” at the Exodus and ratified at Sinai (Deuteronomy 32:6 LXX). This judgment is not asleep and will not be delayed (2 Peter 2:3). It is the same judgment Moses prophesied would come upon Israel in her “last days” when she became utterly corrupt, rejected her Rock, and filled up her sins (Deuteronomy 31:29; 32:5, 20, 29).
The false teachers of Peter’s day are the “spots and blemishes” (2 Peter 2:13) Moses foresaw in that perverse generation (Deuteronomy 32:5; Acts 2:40). Just as many of the original spots and blemishes within the Sinai-created covenant people perished in the wilderness, so these false teachers and the entire Old Covenant order or “heavens and earth” would perish with it in the fiery judgment of AD 70.
With that context established, Peter moves in chapter 3 to remind his readers of the certainty and nearness of this judgment, using typology (including clear parallels such as Jeremiah 4), Psalm 90, and the promise of new heavens and a new earth from Isaiah 64–66.
2 Peter 2: The Context of Imminent, Undelayed Judgment on the Sinai-Created World
Peter opens chapter 2 by contrasting true prophets with false teachers who secretly introduce destructive heresies, “even denying the Master who bought them” (2 Peter 2:1). As Gary Long has demonstrated,[1] this language deliberately echoes Deuteronomy 32:6 in the Septuagint: God as the sovereign Lord who “purchased,” “made,” “created,” and “formed” Israel as a covenant nation.
These false teachers are further described as “spots and blemishes” reveling in their deceptions (2 Peter 2:13). This is a direct allusion to Deuteronomy 32:5, where Israel is called a “perverse and crooked generation” marked by blemishes. Peter identifies the false teachers as the very spots and blemishes Moses prophesied and God ordained long ago that would arise among the covenant people in the last days–those who deny the pre-incarnate “Lord” (despoten) that “created” (agorasanta) them through the exodus event (Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 51:9-16) and would be judged in the events of AD 70.
A brief note on the Greek is in order. The participle ἀγοράσαντα in 2 Peter 2:1 means “bought,” “purchased,” or “acquired.” I do not claim the word itself means “created.” As Gary D. Long has carefully demonstrated in his lexical and contextual study of the verse, Peter is deliberately alluding to Deuteronomy 32:6 (LXX). There Moses piles up three related verbs: the Lord “bought/acquired,” “made,” and “established/formed” Israel as His covenant people through the Exodus. The Septuagint rendering of the third verb carries the sense of “created.” By using the single term “bought,” Peter summarizes the entire cluster. The false teachers are thereby identified as members of that same covenant people who deny the sovereign Master who acquired, made, and formed them. Long rightly calls this the “sovereign creation” emphasis: the pre-incarnate Lord sovereignly acquired and constituted the covenant nation (including the “spots” among them). The reference is therefore to the sovereign formation of the Old Covenant people at the Exodus and Sinai, not to a redemptive purchase by the blood of Christ. The lexical precision does not weaken the intertextual link; it strengthens it.
Their judgment is swift and certain: “Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep” (2 Peter 2:3, NASB). The judgment is not asleep—it is awake, active, and already in motion. It will not be delayed. This language of non-delay echoes the broader prophetic expectation of the “last days” judgment on the Old Covenant order (cf. Deuteronomy 32:35 LXX; Habakkuk 2:3; Hebrews 10:37).
In fact, in Deuteronomy 32:35 (LXX) Moses teaches that when the “appointed time” (Greek kairos) would come in that last days perverse and crooked generation, God’s coming in judgment would be “ready” and “near.” Peter uses all of the same Greek words in 1 Peter 4:5, 7, 17 to teach that God was “ready to judge the living and the dead” and thus “the end of all things is near” because “the appointed time” (kairos) for judgment had come. This is likewise consistent with Peter identifying his generation as the prophetic one Moses prophesied that would see Israel’s last days end (cf. Acts 2:40; Deuteronomy 32:5, 20).
Just a sidenote—this is very problematic for Gentry’s partial preterist hyper-creedalist position. He teaches that the living and the dead here in 1 Peter 4:5-7 were judged in an AD 70 “near” time frame but does not explain how that took place. Nor does he harmonize it with Paul teaching that Christ’s coming and the judgment of the living and dead was “about to” be fulfilled in AD 70 (2 Timothy 4:1 YLT), or that the resurrection of the just and unjust was “about to be” fulfilled as well (Acts 24:15 YLT). Are these not references to the judgment of Daniel 12:2 that Gentry now concedes was fulfilled in AD 70? Moreover, the historic creeds (such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed) do not teach two judgments or two resurrections for the living and the dead—they describe a single, final event at the end of the age. In the same way the creeds nor the NT teaches two passing aways of the “first heavens and earth” and two arrivals of the new. Gentry’s partial preterist experiment to try and arbitrarily honor NT imminence while also being a hyper-creedalist, has epically failed.
Peter reinforces this with examples of past judgments on the ungodly within covenant contexts: angels who sinned, the ancient world of Noah’s day, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Balaam.
A clarification is needed here. When I speak of “covenantal judgment upon those who turn from the truth within God’s people,” I do not mean that every example is identical in kind to the Sinai covenant. The angels, the pre-flood world, and Sodom are broader demonstrations that God’s judgment on the ungodly has never been idle or asleep (2:3). The Noahic flood in particular functions as the great historical type: the same word that ordered the world out of water also brought destruction by water. The “world that then existed” (kosmos) perished; the physical fabric of the planet did not. That precedent supplies the pattern for the greater, climactic judgment that would dissolve the Sinai-created “heavens and earth” by fire in AD 70. Typology requires correspondence and escalation, not identity of substance or identical covenant structures. The pre-flood order does not have to be a Sinai-type covenant for the flood to serve as type.
The false teachers of Peter’s generation are the final fulfillment of Moses’ warning in Deuteronomy 32—they are part of the perverse generation that would not discern its end and would be judged when the covenant world itself was dissolved.
This sets the stage for chapter 3. The same readers who are being reminded of these past judgments are now told that the current “heavens and earth” (the Old Covenant order established at Sinai) are likewise reserved for fire.
2 Peter 3: The Reminder of Imminent Fulfillment
- Verses 1–2: A Reminder of 1 Peter 1:4–12 – The New Heavens and Earth as the Imminent Inheritance and Salvation of the Soul
Peter begins chapter 3: “This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles” (2 Peter 3:1-2).
This is explicitly a reminder. In his first letter, Peter had spoken of “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). He described this as “the end/goal of your faith—the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:9), which was “ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5) and was “at hand” for the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:7, 13; 4:7, 17).
The new heavens and new earth Peter will mention in 2 Peter 3:13 is therefore the same reality: the imminent inheritance and salvation of the soul promised in 1 Peter 1:4-12 and rooted in Isaiah 65. It is not a distant physical recreation of the universe but the full arrival of the New Covenant order—the New Jerusalem, the Church as the bride, righteousness dwelling among God’s people—fulfilled when the Old Covenant order passed away in AD 70.
- Verses 3–4: The Scoffers of the “Last Days” – Deuteronomy 32’s Perverse Generation That Would Not Discern Its End
Peter warns: “Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation’” (2 Peter 3:3-4).
These scoffers arise in “the last days”—the final generation of the Old Covenant (cf. Acts 2:17; Hebrews 1:2; 1 Peter 1:20). Moses had prophesied exactly this in Deuteronomy 31:29 and 32:5, 20, 29: In the last days Israel would become utterly corrupt, turn aside from the way, and reject the Rock (ultimately the Messiah). They would heap up sins until the measure was full. Moses lamented that they were “a perverse and crooked generation” (Deuteronomy 32:5) that would not be able to discern what their end would be (Deuteronomy 32:29).
Peter identifies the false teachers and scoffers of his day as the fulfillment of that prophecy. They are the “spots and blemishes” within the perverse generation (Acts 2:40 quotes Deuteronomy 32:5 directly in the Pentecost sermon). Most would not discern the signs of the times or the nearness of the judgment that would dissolve their entire covenant world.
- Verse 4: The Mockers’ Appeal to Unchanging Continuity Since Creation
The scoffers mock the promise of Christ’s coming (parousia/judgment) by appealing to the apparent lack of change: “all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” and since the time of “the fathers.” They treat the physical stability of the world and the ongoing existence of the temple and Jewish polity as proof that nothing apocalyptic is about to happen.
Peter will answer this by reminding them that things have not always continued unchanged. God’s word has repeatedly created and then de-created covenant orders.
The Typological Heart of Peter’s Argument (2 Peter 3:5-7): Physical Type → Covenant Antitype
This is the decisive exegetical link that both Kenneth Gentry and Tim Martin miss. Peter is not equating the “heavens and earth which now exist” with the physical creation of Genesis 1. Nor is he forcing Genesis 1 itself to be purely covenantal. He is employing classic biblical typology: the physical creation and the Noahic flood serve as a historical type and precedent, while the Old Covenant order (created at Sinai) is the greater antitype facing judgment by fire in AD 70.
Peter writes:
“For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” (2 Peter 3:5-7)
Notice the deliberate contrast and the unifying thread:
- “The world that THEN was” = the physical, pre-flood world (explicitly tied to Genesis 1:2, 6–9 — the ordering of the watery chaos). This world was created and then judged/de-created by water.
- “The heavens and earth which NOW exist” = the covenantal order of Peter’s day (the Sinai-created “heavens and earth” of Isaiah 51:15-16 and Deuteronomy 32, still standing with its temple, Law, and priesthood). This order is reserved for judgment by fire.
Some have objected that this reading introduces an inconsistency: if Peter is reminding the scoffers that God’s word has repeatedly created and then de-created ordered realities, how can the only past example (the flood) be treated as a physical event while the present judgment is covenantal? The answer is that typology does not require identical substance. The unifying thread is the power of the divine word—the same word that formed the pre-flood world out of water and then judged it by water is the word that formed the Sinai order and would judge it by fire. Water and fire are both real instruments of judgment; both carry covenantal weight in their respective settings. The difference in mode (physical flood → covenantal fire) and the difference in the nature of the ordered reality being judged highlight the escalation from type to antitype. Jeremiah 4 already models exactly this move: Genesis creation language is redeployed to describe a local, historical, covenantal de-creation without turning Genesis 1 itself into pure symbolism. Peter stands in the same prophetic stream. Selective reading of “world” (kosmos) versus “heavens and earth” is not special pleading; the vocabulary itself invites the distinction. Peter can speak of the kosmos that perished in the flood while reserving “heavens and earth” language for the present covenantal order that is stored up for fire.
The common thread is not the substance (physical vs. covenantal) but the word of God that both creates and judges. Peter’s point is powerful precisely because of the difference in the mode of judgment: water (physical type) versus fire (covenantal antitype). The scoffers assume “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” (v. 4). Peter replies: No—they do not. God’s word has a track record of creating order and then dissolving it when the time for judgment comes.
Old Testament Precedent: Jeremiah 4 and the Use of Genesis Creation Language for Local Covenant Judgment
A powerful parallel appears in Jeremiah 4, where the prophet describes the coming Babylonian invasion and covenant judgment upon Judah using explicit reversal-of-creation language drawn directly from Genesis 1. Jeremiah writes:
“I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty [tohu wabohu];
I looked to the heavens, and their light was gone.
I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking,
and all the hills were swaying.
I looked, and there were no people;
every bird in the sky had flown away.
I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert;
all its towns lay in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.” (Jeremiah 4:23-26)
This is not a prediction of the literal end of the physical universe or a global cosmic catastrophe. It is a vivid, prophetic portrayal of covenantal de-creation—the undoing of the ordered world of Judah as a consequence of her covenant unfaithfulness. The land would be ruined (though not completely destroyed, Jeremiah 4:27), cities laid waste, and the ordered creation seemingly reversed under God’s fierce anger. The same “formless and empty” (tohu wabohu) language that describes the pre-creation state in Genesis 1:2 is here applied to the desolation of Israel’s covenant world.
This example is decisive. If Gentry’s logic were applied consistently to Jeremiah 4—“because the prophet uses Genesis 1 language, the judgment must be a future physical destruction of the material cosmos”—then Jeremiah 4 would have to be reinterpreted as cosmic rather than the local, historical judgment on Judah that actually occurred in 586 BC. Yet interpreters rightly understand Jeremiah 4 as figurative, covenantal language describing a real but localized judgment on Israel. Peter follows exactly the same prophetic pattern in 2 Peter 3.
Jeremiah 4 thus serves as a clear Old Testament precedent showing that Genesis creation language can (and does) function typologically to describe covenantal judgment without requiring a literal, physical end of the world. Peter stands in this same prophetic stream.
Kenneth Gentry, in his article “2 PETER 3 AND THE CONSUMMATION (2),” directly confronts preterist readings of this passage. He writes:
“The destruction of the heavens and the earth that he envisions involves the current material creation. Hence, it refers to the distant consummation and not the approaching AD 70 conflagration, despite certain similarities between the two events (since one is the type of the other). Peter expressly refers to the material creation order: ‘from the beginning of creation’ (2 Peter 3:4; cf. Genesis 1:1); ‘by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water’ (3:5; cf. Genesis 1:2, 9); ‘the heavens and the earth which now exist’ (3:7). Thus, he defines the ‘heavens and earth’ to which he refers and which God will replace with a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ (3:10, 13). He is not contemplating the destruction of the old Jewish order in AD 70, but the material heavens and the earth at the second advent.”[2]
Gentry acknowledges “certain similarities” and that AD 70 functions typologically in relation to a greater event, yet he insists the primary referent in 2 Peter 3 must be the future physical consummation because of the Genesis creation language.
In “2 PETER 3 AND THE CONSUMMATION (1),” he further distinguishes his view from partial preterists like David Chilton who apply the new creation to the post-AD 70 era, arguing instead that the passage “points instead to the consummate order which follows the resurrection and the final judgment.”[3] And yet Gentry affirms Peter’s teaching that “the judgment of the living and the dead” was “near” of 1 Peter 4:5-7 was fulfilled in AD 70 along with the resurrection of Daniel 12:2! So, we can clearly see how the new creation of 2 Peter 3 follows this resurrection and judgment of the dead.
Gentry’s own admission that AD 70 bears “certain similarities” to the judgment in 2 Peter 3 (as a type) actually supports the typological reading I am advancing, but he has the type and antitype reversed for this specific text. Peter is using the physical as type for the covenantal judgment in AD 70. The language of “the heavens and the earth which now exist” is defined contextually by the Old Covenant world still standing in Peter’s day—not by an identity with the material creation of Genesis 1.
Jeremiah 4 exposes the inconsistency in Gentry’s approach. He correctly reads Genesis creation language in Jeremiah as applying to a local covenant judgment on Israel. The same hermeneutic applied to 2 Peter 3 yields the covenantal reading. Gentry’s insistence that Peter “defines the ‘heavens and earth’” solely by material creation language overlooks the broader biblical pattern (already established in Parts 1 and 2) in which creation language is routinely applied to covenant formation and de-creation (Isaiah 51:15-16; Deuteronomy 32; and now Jeremiah 4).
Martin’s Gentile-Waters Interpretation and the Flood: Covenant Creation on the Horns of a Dilemma
If Kenneth Gentry errs by reasoning from Peter’s reference to physical creation and the Flood to a future physical destruction of the material cosmos, Tim Martin’s Covenant Creation moves in the opposite direction. Covenant Creation identifies the waters of Genesis 1:2–10 with Gentile nations and thereby pushes covenantal symbolism backward into the creation account itself.
That interpretation encounters a serious exegetical problem when Genesis 1 is followed into Noah’s Flood and then into Peter’s creation-to-Flood argument in 2 Peter 3:5–6.
Genesis itself establishes the natural relationship between these passages. Genesis 1:2 places “the face of the deep” (tehom) in parallel with “the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:9–10 then gathers the waters together and calls them “Seas.” When the Flood arrives, “all the fountains of the great deep” burst open (Gen. 7:11), and when the Flood subsides “the fountains of the deep” are closed (Gen. 8:2). Proverbs 8:27–29 similarly places “the face of the deep,” “the fountains of the deep,” and God’s boundary for the sea within the same physical creation context. Job 26:10 describes God drawing a boundary “on the face of the waters.” Isaiah 51:10 is not itself establishing the Genesis-to-Flood connection, but its reference to “the waters of the great deep” at the historical Exodus further confirms that biblical “deep” language naturally refers to actual waters.
Peter then deliberately places creation and the Flood together:
“By the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water” (2 Pet. 3:5–6).
The precise antecedent of di’ hōn (“through/by which”) in verse 6 has been debated, so my argument does not depend upon claiming that every occurrence of water in verses 5–6 refers to numerically identical water. That is unnecessary. Peter’s larger sequence is unmistakable:
creation → water → God’s word → Flood judgment
followed immediately by:
the present heavens and earth → the same divine word → fire judgment (vv. 5–7).
The earth of the ancient creation was constituted “out of water and through water,” and the world (kosmos) then existing subsequently perished in the historical judgment of the Flood. Peter gives no indication that the water of creation must first be decoded as Gentile nations before his readers can understand the Flood.
This places Covenant Creation on the horns of a serious dilemma.
Horn One: If the waters of Genesis 1:2–10 are fundamentally Gentile nations, what happens when the water/deep complex of Genesis 1 reappears in Genesis 7–8 as “the fountains of the great deep”? Carrying the Gentile-waters premise consistently forward pushes the Flood narrative toward increasingly allegorical interpretations. The Flood waters become Gentile forces or armies; the ark becomes a city of refuge or covenant community; and the animals become peoples or nations. Yet Covenant Creation advocates also affirm that Noah’s Flood was a real historical event involving literal water. The system therefore has to explain why the creation waters are fundamentally nations while the “great deep” connected with the Flood is simultaneously allowed to remain actual water.
Horn Two: If the Flood waters of Genesis 7–8 and 2 Peter 3:6 are literal H₂O, what textual reason does Peter give us for making the creation water in the immediately preceding verse Gentile nations? Peter gives no obvious signal that “water” should be read covenantally in verse 5 and historically in verse 6. On the contrary, he places creation and Flood together as successive demonstrations of what God accomplishes by His sovereign word.
There is, admittedly, a logically possible third response. Martin could maintain that Genesis 1 water signifies Gentile nations while Genesis 7–8 describes literal water that also carries covenantal symbolism. But the mere possibility of assigning different meanings does not establish them exegetically. The burden falls upon Covenant Creation to demonstrate from the text itself—not from the requirements of the system—why the reader should switch from Gentile nations to H₂O exactly where the system needs that transition.
Augustine, the Animals, and the Difference Between Typology and Referential Replacement
This distinction becomes especially important when Augustine is appealed to for the idea that the animals in Noah’s ark symbolize nations. Augustine’s interpretation is classic typology, not the replacement of historical referents with covenantal ones. In Contra Faustum XII.15, the various animals preserved in the ark prefigure the nations subsequently gathered into the Church. But Augustine does not need the animals to cease being literal animals in order for them to typify nations.
Real animals are the historical type; the nations gathered into Christ’s Church are the covenantal antitype.
That distinction gives us an important test for Covenant Creation. If the claim is merely that literal animals typify peoples and nations, there is no difficulty. Scripture repeatedly uses historical persons, places, institutions, and events typologically. But if “animals” are made to mean or refer to people within the historical Flood narrative itself, consistent substitution quickly produces absurd results.
Immediately after the Flood God tells Noah:
“The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens…. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you” (Gen. 9:2–3).
If the animals in the Noah narrative actually refer to people or Gentile nations, what happens when that same interpretive substitution is carried consistently into Genesis 9? God would effectively be authorizing Noah and his descendants to eat the nations. Obviously, Genesis 9 teaches no such thing.
This is not an argument against symbolism or typology. It is a reductio against referential replacement.
Literal animals can typify nations without ceasing to be animals. Literal Flood waters can typify a later covenant judgment without ceasing to be water. And the physical creation can provide the pattern for later covenant creation and de-creation without requiring Genesis 1 itself to be the Mosaic covenant.
The problem, therefore, is not:
animal → typologically represents a nation.
The problem arises when the hermeneutic becomes:
animal = actually refers to a nation within the historical narrative.
The first is ordinary biblical typology. The second, when consistently applied, begins rewriting the narrative and generates interpretations the surrounding context cannot sustain.
This is precisely why Augustine cannot rescue such an interpretation. Augustine preserves the historical type while recognizing a later ecclesiological fulfillment. Real animals can signify nations precisely because the type and antitype are not identical in substance. His interpretation therefore illustrates the very hermeneutical distinction Covenant Creation needs to preserve.
Where Does the Allegorizing Stop?
The severity of the problem should not be understated. If Covenant Creation can take the waters of Genesis 1 and make them Gentile nations, carry that premise into the Flood so that waters become armies, the ark becomes a city or covenant community, and animals become people, we have moved well beyond recognizing legitimate biblical typology. We are approaching a method of allegorization that would make even some of the most skeptical historical-critical interpreters of Scripture blush.
And this raises a larger hermeneutical question: Where does the allegorizing stop?
If historical referents can be replaced with covenantal or spiritual meanings whenever a theological system requires it, what principled exegetical safeguard prevents the same method from being applied to the historical narratives of the New Testament? Why could a liberal interpreter not argue that Jesus did not literally multiply loaves and fishes, but that the “bread” merely represents spiritual nourishment for the covenant community? Why must Lazarus have historically come out of a physical tomb if his resurrection can simply symbolize Israel or humanity coming from covenantal death to life? Why insist that Christ’s own resurrection involved an actual historical event if resurrection language can be reduced to the emergence of a new covenant community?
The answer cannot merely be, “because we believe those New Testament events really happened.” The question is hermeneutical: What textual controls require us to preserve the historical referent while also recognizing its theological and typological significance?
Historic Christianity has normally answered by preserving both. Jesus really multiplied bread, and the miracle also carries theological significance. Lazarus really came from the tomb, and his resurrection also points beyond itself to Christ as “the resurrection and the life.” Christ really rose, and His resurrection simultaneously possesses corporate and covenantal implications for those united to Him. The theological meaning does not cancel the historical event that carries that meaning.
The same principle should govern Genesis. Real animals can typify nations. A real ark can typify salvation and refuge. A real Flood can establish the pattern of divine judgment. Physical creation can supply the vocabulary subsequently applied to covenant creation and de-creation. None of this requires us to transform animals into people, water into Gentile armies, or Genesis 1 into the Mosaic covenant.
This is why the issue is larger than one interpretation of Genesis. Once the distinction between historical referent and typological significance is surrendered, there is no obvious stopping point internal to the method itself. The same hermeneutical procedure that can dissolve the historical waters, animals, and Flood of Genesis into covenant symbols can, in principle, be used by theological liberalism to dissolve the historical miracles of the New Testament into religious metaphors.
That does not prove that Covenant Creation denies New Testament miracles, nor am I accusing Martin of doing so. It demonstrates a methodological consequence: a hermeneutic must possess principled textual controls that explain why historical language remains historical in one passage while being replaced by covenantal referents in another.
Otherwise the controlling principle becomes not what the text says, but what the theological system needs the text to mean.
When a System Begins Controlling the Text: The Dispensational Parallel
Dispensationalism provides an instructive parallel for what happens when the demands of a theological system begin determining how biblical types must function.
Its commitment to restoring national Israel’s Old Covenant institutions in a future millennium leads many dispensational interpreters to expect a rebuilt physical temple, Levitical worship, circumcision, and animal sacrifices after Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice. Dispensationalists commonly respond that these future sacrifices will be memorial rather than salvific. But that answer does not remove the underlying hermeneutical problem: institutions Hebrews presents as shadows surpassed by their fulfillment in Christ are restored after the substance has arrived (Heb. 8–10; cf. Gal. 5:2–4).
The problem is not that dispensationalists deny the sufficiency of Christ simply because they expect millennial sacrifices. The deeper problem is methodological. A controlling theological system requires the interpreter to carry earlier biblical shadows beyond the point where New Testament revelation has brought them to fulfillment.
Covenant Creation risks the opposite but structurally similar error.
Dispensationalism pushes Old Covenant shadows forward beyond their fulfillment; Covenant Creation pushes later covenant symbolism backward into physical creation.
Once the controlling premise is established that Genesis 1’s waters must be Gentile nations, that premise begins determining what the Flood waters, ark, animals, land, seas, and other details are allowed to mean. The interpreter is no longer simply recognizing typological significance in historical realities; the danger is that the historical realities themselves become reassigned covenantal referents because the system requires them.
In both cases the controlling question should be the same:
Is the interpretation arising naturally from the text and the Bible’s own typological development, or is the theological system requiring the text to produce the interpretation?
This is precisely where the physical-type → covenantal-antitype distinction provides the simpler solution.
Gentry and Martin therefore make opposite errors. Gentry collapses the antitype back into the physical type: because Peter begins with physical creation and a physical Flood, he concludes that Peter’s coming fire must destroy the physical cosmos. Martin collapses the physical type forward into the covenantal antitype: because Peter’s imminent judgment concerns the covenant world, Genesis 1 itself must already be covenantal creation.
Neither conclusion follows from Peter’s actual argument; both arise from theological systems imposed upon the direction of his typology.
Peter’s argument preserves the progression:
Physical creation → historical Flood by water → typological precedent → Sinai-created covenant heavens and earth → judgment by fire in AD 70.
The historical reality of the type is what gives the antitype its force. Real animals can prefigure nations. A real ark can prefigure salvation and refuge. A real Flood can prefigure covenantal judgment. And physical creation itself can furnish the prophetic vocabulary later used to describe the creation and de-creation of covenant worlds.
There is therefore no exegetical necessity to turn Genesis 1’s waters into Gentile nations in order to establish a covenantal interpretation of 2 Peter 3. On the contrary, doing so creates unnecessary problems for the Flood narrative and obscures the very typological movement Peter is employing.
The Flood remains a real historical judgment by real water upon the world that then existed. It supplies the precedent, not a coded allegory, for the greater covenantal judgment Peter announces upon “the heavens and earth which now exist.”
Genesis gives us the historical type. Peter gives us the covenantal antitype. The strength of the argument depends upon preserving the distinction between them—not collapsing one into the other.
Comparison: Errors of Gentry and Martin vs. the Correct Typological View
|
Aspect |
Gentry’s Position & Error |
Martin’s (Covenant Creation) Position & Error |
Correct Typological View |
|
Reference to Genesis 1 / Creation Language |
Because Peter references Genesis 1:6 and the physical flood, the entire passage (including “heavens and earth which now exist”) must refer to the material cosmos and a future physical end of the world. |
Because the “now” heavens and earth refer to the covenantal order dissolved in AD 70, Genesis 1 itself must be purely covenantal/symbolic (not physical creation). |
Physical creation/flood (and de-creation language in Jeremiah 4) functions as type. Peter applies it to the covenantal judgment on the Old Covenant order in AD 70 as antitype. Type does not equal antitype in substance. |
|
“Heavens and Earth Which Now Exist” (2 Peter 3:7) |
Must be the current material/physical heavens and earth (hence future consummation). |
Must be covenantal, but this forces Genesis 1 language to be covenantal too. |
Refers to the Old Covenant order (Sinai-created “heavens and earth”) still standing in Peter’s day. Context and Old Testament parallels determine the referent. |
|
Mode of Judgment (Water vs. Fire) |
Fire must be literal/physical destruction of the material world at the end of history. |
AD 70 is correct, but the typology is collapsed. |
Water (physical flood) serves as historical type of fire (covenantal judgment in AD 70). The correspondence is the reliability of the divine word that both creates and dissolves ordered realities; the escalation is in mode and in the nature of the order being judged. Typology does not demand identical substance. |
|
Role of AD 70 |
Acknowledges “similarities” as type of future event but makes AD 70 secondary/minor. |
Correctly sees AD 70 as fulfillment but errs on Genesis. |
AD 70 is the primary fulfillment in view; physical events (flood, Jeremiah 4-style de-creation) serve as types. |
|
Common Biblical Theme |
Overlooks or subordinates the consistent prophetic use of creation language for covenant realities. |
Forces all creation language into one category. |
The Word of God creates order out of chaos and judges/de-creates when covenant faithfulness is broken (Genesis 1 → Flood; Jeremiah 4 de-creation on Judah; Sinai creation → AD 70 fire on Old Covenant order). |
The two competing systems therefore pull Peter in opposite directions. Gentry reasons that because the type is physical, the antitype must also be physical. Martin reasons that because the antitype is covenantal, the type must also have been covenantal. Both approaches collapse the distinction Peter’s typology requires.
The better reading allows both sides of the analogy to remain intact:
Physical creation and Flood → covenantal de-creation at the end of the Mosaic age.
That preserves the historical reality of Genesis while also preserving the imminent covenantal fulfillment of Peter’s prophecy.
John Owen, commenting directly on 2 Peter 3, captures the typological move perfectly:
“The apostle makes a distribution of the world into heaven and earth, and saith they were destroyed with water, and perished… We know that neither the fabric nor substance of the one or the other was destroyed, but only men that lived on the earth… The heavens and earth here intended… do all of them relate, not to the last and final judgment of the world, but to that utter desolation and destruction that was to be made of the Judaical church and state.”[4]
Owen rightly sees Peter moving from the physical type (flood destroying the “world that then was”) to the covenantal antitype (fire destroying the Judaical “heavens and earth”).
This is the same pattern documented in Part 1 and now reinforced by Jeremiah 4: Isaiah 51 uses Exodus/Sinai creation language to describe Israel as God’s covenant world; Deuteronomy 32 applies creation language to the formation of Israel out of Egyptian chaos; Jeremiah 4 applies de-creation language to covenant judgment on Judah. Peter does here what the prophets did before him: he reaches back to physical creation/flood language as a vivid type to illustrate God’s power to judge the current covenant order.
The “elements” (stoicheia) further confirm the shift: in the New Testament this term consistently refers to the rudimentary principles/regulations of the Old Covenant Law (Galatians 4:3, 9; Colossians 2:8, 20; Hebrews 5:12), not literal physical atoms. These “elements” were being dissolved even as Peter wrote (present tense in 3:11 — “are being dissolved,” LEB/Pulpit Commentary), culminating in the fiery judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70.
Typology does not require identity of substance; it requires correspondence and escalation. The physical flood (and the de-creation imagery of Jeremiah 4) prefigures the greater covenantal de-creation in AD 70. Just as the physical temple typified God’s dwelling (and its destruction signified the end of the old system), the physical creation/flood typifies the end of the Sinai-created world. Peter’s short verses pack this punch because his first-century readers, steeped in the Old Testament, would instantly recognize the move from type to antitype—exactly as modern readers recognize it in Jeremiah 4.
This typological reading is the consistent, exegetically grounded solution. It avoids Gentry’s futurism and Martin’s over-covenantalizing or spiritualizing of Genesis while honoring the text exactly as written. The word of God that created the physical order and judged it by water (or depicted covenant judgment through de-creation language in Jeremiah) is the same word that created the Old Covenant order at Sinai and judged it by fire in AD 70—exactly as Peter promised.
- Verses 8–9: Psalm 90 – God’s Eternity, Man’s Short Lifespan, the Wilderness “Long Time,” and Divine Patience
Peter appeals to Psalm 90 (written by Moses): “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:8-9).
Psalm 90 contrasts man’s fleeting lifespan with God’s eternal nature. Moses notes that even the longest human boast (Methuselah’s 969 or 950 years) is like a watch in the night to God. When Moses wrote, the average lifespan was 70–80 years (Ps. 90:10), and his own rebellious generation—the “perverse and crooked generation” of Deuteronomy 32:5—was destined to perish in the wilderness after 40 years, a period that felt interminably long to them.
Just as Adam perished in shame and dust outside the Garden, the rebels among Israel would perish in the desert dust outside the Promised Land (itself a type of Eden). Peter’s appeal to Psalm 90 further proves the mockers wrong—everything was not continuing unchanged “among the fathers from the beginning of creation.” If they refused to trust in Christ and His new exodus, which frees men from the slavery of sin, they too would perish outside God’s presence and fail to inherit eternal life (of which the Garden of Eden and the Promised Land were types). Biological death, whether for Adam or those wandering in the wilderness, was not the main theological point—it was where they died: in the dust, separated from God’s presence and blessing. Likewise, one can die “in Christ” and “never die” (that is, never be spiritually separated from Him), or one can refuse Him and “die in their sins” outside His presence.
Some Jewish interpreters took Psalm 90:15-17 as pointing to a future period of joy that would balance the years of affliction, and rabbinic tradition elsewhere spoke of the Messianic age lasting 40 years (Sanhedrin 99a)—a kind of second exodus. This fits the wilderness context of the psalm and the 40-year transition many first-century believers would have recognized from Christ’s ministry to the judgment in AD 70. Peter has a reason for appealing to the typology and eschatology of Psalm 90!
Some commentators such as John Gill catch that Psalm 90:5 (“You sweep them away as with a flood”) is an explicit allusion to the Noahic flood, the very judgment Peter appeals to in 2 Peter 3:5–6. This creates a powerful typological link: the same God who swept away the ungodly in Noah’s day and in the wilderness is about to sweep away the final perverse generation in the fiery flood of AD 70.
The Pulpit Commentary on John 5:5 explicitly connects the man who had been infirm for thirty-eight years to Israel’s thirty-eight years of wilderness wandering (Deuteronomy 2:14), noting that commentators such as Hengstenberg, Wordsworth, and Westcott (in part) saw “a marked correspondence between these thirty-eight years and the similar period of time during which Israel was compelled to wander in the wilderness.” That “long time” of suffering and waiting was nothing in God’s sight.
Peter applies the same principle to his own generation. The scoffers thought the delay was long, but it was nothing to the Lord. The following parallels make the connection unmistakable:
Psalm 90 and the Two Perverse Generations
| Aspect | Psalm 90 / Wilderness Generation | Peter’s Generation (AD 30–70) | Significance |
| Man’s mortality vs. God’s eternality | A thousand years like yesterday or a watch in the night; life withers like grass (vv. 4–6, 9–10) | Scoffers claim “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:4) | What feels like endless delay to short-lived humans is but a moment to the eternal Lord. |
| The “long time” of judgment | Rebellious generation perishes over 40 years—a lifetime to them (Num. 14; Deut. 2:14) | Forty years from Christ’s ministry to the AD 70 judgment; scoffers mock the “delay” | Forty years is nothing to God but feels interminable to covenant-breakers. |
| Swept away as with a flood | “You sweep them away as with a flood” (Ps. 90:5) — seen by John Gill and others as a reference to the Noahic flood | Peter appeals to the Noahic flood as a type of covenant judgment (2 Pet. 3:5–6) | Reinforces the flood typology: the same God who swept away the ungodly in Noah’s day and in the wilderness will do so again in the fiery judgment of AD 70. |
| Where one dies — the theological issue | Adam perished outside the Garden; Israel’s rebels perished in the desert dust outside the Promised Land (types of exclusion from God’s blessing & inheritance / eternal life) | Scoffers risk perishing “outside” Christ — “in their sins” and outside the New Covenant inheritance | Biological death is not the main point; the issue is location — in God’s presence (in Christ / New Eden) or outside in shame and judgment. One can die “in Christ” and never die spiritually, or in unbelief and “die in your sins.” |
| Messianic “second exodus” hope | “Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us… Let Your work appear… establish the work of our hands” (Ps. 90:15–17) | Understood by many first-century Jews as a 40-year transitional period | Messiah has come. This final 40-year period brings salvation to the believing remnant and judgment to the perverse generation. |
Summary: Peter’s use of Psalm 90 is masterful. He shows the scoffers that the forty-year period they view as a “delay” is nothing in God’s eternal sight — just as the wilderness generation’s forty years felt endless but was brief to the Lord. The real issue is not the length of time or even physical death, but where one dies: inside God’s presence and blessing (in Christ and the New Covenant) or outside in the dust of judgment. The same God who swept away the ungodly by water in Noah’s day and in the wilderness is now bringing fiery judgment on the final perverse generation in AD 70. Yet in His patience He still calls the righteous remnant to repentance and inheritance. What feels like a long wait to man is but a day to God — and that day of judgment and salvation had already arrived.
Just as the wilderness generation’s 40 years of perishing felt long to them, it was brief in God’s economy. During that same period, God was patient and long-suffering, allowing the righteous remnant to hear the gospel and be saved (cf. the “salvation ready to be revealed” in 1 Peter 1).
This has nothing to do with thousands of years of delay into our future—as futurists often misquote it. Peter is comforting first-century believers that the “long time” (to them in relation to their brief lifespan) the mockers complained about was, in God’s sight, like a single day—and that the judgment was in fact imminent (“not asleep,” “not delayed,” “at hand”).
The wicked servant in the parable of Matthew 24 who said, “My master is delayed” (Matthew 24:48) embodies the exact attitude Peter condemns. God is not slow; He is patient, and the appointed time (kairos) had come. For people living in the AD 30–70 “this generation,” forty years could be considered a “long time” in relation to their lifespans. But this was not a long time to God – the remnant was being saved and would inherit salvation and eternal life at Christ’s Parousia while the wicked were perishing and their judgment would not be delayed. The judgment and second exodus of Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 90 had arrived.
- Verse 11: Present Tense – “All These Things Are Being Dissolved”
Peter writes: “Since all these things are being dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness” (2 Peter 3:11, LEB; cf. Pulpit Commentary: “seeing that all these things are being dissolved”).
The present tense (“are being dissolved”) is decisive. Peter does not say the physical planet will one day be dissolved in some distant future. He speaks of the process already underway in his readers’ lifetime. The Old Covenant order—with its temple, sacrifices, priesthood, and elementary principles of the Law—was in the process of being dissolved even as Peter wrote. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 completed what had already begun with the cross and the rending of the veil.
This cannot refer to the physical planet, which continues to this day. It refers to the covenantal “heavens and earth” that were being removed so that the unshakable New Covenant reality could remain (Hebrews 12:26-28).
Peter Leithart’s work on the “elements of the world” (Galatians 4 and Colossians 2) reinforces this: the stoicheia are the fundamental building blocks of the old creation/order—socioreligious structures of the Old Covenant that Christ has disassembled and replaced with the new creation.
- Verses 12–13: The Promise from Isaiah 64–66 – Non-Physical Apocalyptic Coming and Gentry’s Inconsistent Hermeneutic
Peter concludes: “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the elements will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:12-13).
The promise of the new heavens and new earth comes directly from Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 (as we saw in Part 1). But Peter also alludes to the broader context of Isaiah 64, where the prophet cries out for God to “come down” from heaven in a dramatic, non-physical apocalyptic theophany to judge the nations and vindicate His people—just as He had done in the past (Exodus, Sinai, etc.).
This “coming down” is covenantal and apocalyptic language, not a literal physical descent of God or Christ to burn up the planet.
Here Kenneth Gentry’s hermeneutic becomes glaringly inconsistent. Gentry takes the de-creation and new creation language of Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21:1-2 figuratively and applies it to the AD 70 judgment on Old Covenant Jerusalem. Yet when Peter appeals to the same Old Testament passage (Isaiah 64–66), Gentry suddenly insists 2 Peter 3 must be a literal, future, physical destruction of the material cosmos at the end of history.
This is special pleading. The consistent reading is that Isaiah 64–66, 2 Peter 3, and Revelation 21 all describe the same event: the passing of the Old Covenant “heavens and earth” in AD 70 and the full establishment of the New Covenant order.
John Owen again confirms this reading:
“Peter tells them, that after the destruction and judgment that he speaks of (vers. 7-13), ‘We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth,’ etc. But now it is evident from this place of Isaiah, with chap. lxvi. 21, 22, that this is a prophecy of Gospel times only; and that the planting of these new heavens is nothing but the creation of Gospel ordinances to endure for ever.”[5]
Conclusion
From 2 Peter 2 through 3, Peter teaches that the judgment upon the Old Covenant world “made” and “created” at Sinai was not asleep and would not be delayed. The false teachers were the spots and blemishes Moses had prophesied would arise in that perverse generation and would not discern their end. Peter uses the physical flood (and de-creation imagery like Jeremiah 4) as typology to show that the same word that creates can also judge and dissolve. He appeals to Psalm 90 to show that what felt like a long delay to man [in relation to his lifespan] was nothing to God—and that God was being patient in that AD 30-70 generation while the righteous remnant was being saved. The present tense “are being dissolved” confirms the process was already underway in the first century. And the promise of new heavens and a new earth is drawn from Isaiah 64–66, describing the non-physical apocalyptic transition from the Old Covenant to the New in AD 70.
This covenantal reading of 2 Peter 3 is also held by many other prominent voices such as R.C. Sproul (partial preterist), Gary DeMar, Doug Wilson, Jeff Durbin, and many others who recognize the AD 70 fulfillment of the passing of the Mosaic old covenant order and the establishment of the new. Full preterism has consistently taken this position. Tim Martin’s attempt to interject the futurist view and hermeneutic—that the passing away of the heavens and earth in 2 Peter 3 refers to the “heavens and earth” of Genesis 1:1—is a departure from that consistency. In the end, Martin’s “Covenant Creationist” position, which reads Genesis 1:1 into Psalm 102, Hebrews 1, Revelation 21, and 2 Peter 3, is a compromise with futurism and therefore cannot be seen as consistent preterism.
Kenneth Gentry’s physical futurist reading of 2 Peter 3, while acknowledging typological similarities with AD 70, ultimately contradicts the immediate covenantal context, clear Old Testament parallels like Jeremiah 4, and his own figurative handling of parallel passages like Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21. Tim Martin’s Covenant Creation view, which cannot allow multiple covenantal “heavens and earths,” is likewise refuted by the consistent pattern from Sinai through 2 Peter.
The Old Covenant order has passed away. The new heavens and new earth—in which righteousness dwells—have come. This is the inheritance Peter promised was “ready to be revealed” and the salvation of the soul that was the goal of faith.
The judgment was not delayed. It came exactly when and how the prophets and apostles said it would. In the end, I believe the exegesis presented here demonstrates that futurism, partial preterism, and Tim Martin’s Covenant Creationism read into Psalm 102, Hebrews 1, Revelation 21, and 2 Peter 3 a reference to the passing away of the physical “heavens and earth” of Genesis 1:1 when the grammar, context, and broader Old Testament pattern do not justify it. It is time to leave behind Gentry’s failed and creedally inconsistent partial preterism as well as the novel teachings of Tim Martin’s Covenant Creation. I will continue to teach what I believe is the true, consistent, and exegetical full preterist position.
[1] Gary D. Long, “Redemption in II Peter 2:1,” The Highway, https://www.the-highway.com/2Pet2.1.html; see also Gary D. Long, Definite Atonement (various editions, commonly associated with Reformed Baptist and Calvinistic literature on particular redemption).
[2] Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., “2 PETER 3 AND THE CONSUMMATION (2),” Postmillennial Worldview, January 1, 2019, https://postmillennialworldview.com/2019/01/01/consummate-new-creation-in-peter-2/.
[3] Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., “2 PETER 3 AND THE CONSUMMATION (1),” Postmillennial Worldview, December 28, 2018, https://postmillennialworldview.com/2018/12/28/consummate-new-creation-in-peter-1/.
[4] John Owen, “Providential Changes, An Argument for Universal Holiness,” in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 9 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; repr., Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 134–135.
[5] Owen, Ibid.