Free Republic

These are difficult times for all denominations founded on the divinity of Jesus Christ.    Recent polling indicates that American church attendance is rapidly declining, with "none" the fastest growing faith group cited by 20 percent of respondents up from 8 percent in 2000.Then during Holy Week, the most sacred seven days for Christians, two tragic events struck that shook the faithful and the world to its core. First, on Monday, April 15, the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, followed by Easter Sunday’s deadly terror attacks in Sri Lanka that targeted worshippers as they were celebrating the resurrection...

In some translations of 2 Peter 3, we see implied that the planet itself (heavenly bodies/elements) will be literally burned up. There are many reasons why this is not literally about the physical cosmos, but rather is about the coming events of AD 70 when God judged Old Covenant Israel. At that time, over a million Jews were slaughtered at the hands of the Romans, the temple was destroyed, and along with it the last vestiges of the Old Covenant order. 1. The Bible elsewhere anticipates a never-ending earth (Ecclesiastes 1:4; Psalm 78:69; 104:5; 148:3-6; Ephesians 3:21). 2. The context...