The 1 Day and the 1000 Years

To quote the famous line from "Cool Hand Luke", "what we have here is a failure to communicate". Our chocolate bar is a definite known quantity. I thought one of the main points of this OP is whether or know we can know the amount of time in question. I meant to say that we do not know how much time.

I didn't realize I was ignoring the day. After all, it takes days to make up years, and a literal 1,000 years is 365,000 days (give or take a few days for leap years). To use a different illustration, all the water in the Pacific Ocean is a drop in God's bucket. It's just a comparative illustration for perspective.

Why is it so important to identify what type of speech the "1,000" is? It's either literal or symbolic, right? Whether the 1,000 years is literal or symbolic makes no difference, since it's all in God's timetable.

 

Peter was referring to these literal periods to show time is no consequence to God keeping His promises

 

This is why it gets tiresome debating you, John. Do you see what you are doing here? You are offering only two doors: "My view" or open theism. As if the topic you brought does not admit of other possibilities.

Aside from being simplistic your last sentence is preemptively demeaning to any ad all opposition. Does not make for good cordial discussion.

 

... like Paul:

"Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants." Gal. 4:24

... like Jesus:

“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." Luke 12:1

 

No, I am not at all feeling superior. In this hotel room I have a mirror. And a wife. And you have the nerve to talk bout misrepresenting? Implying that those who have my view have a foot or two in open theism.

You are posting in a discussion forum, but you are acting like you are lecturing underlings in your class.

 

Yes unless one does violence to the scripture.

The 2 Peter passage is self explanatory.

The point of the 2 Peter passage is that the length of time of the delay (slack-braduno) of His return loses importance because
8 ,,, one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

So Instead of Einsteinian Relativity we have Godly relativity of which "some men" see His "slackness" as an unacceptable delay.

But on the contrary as well as being relative the delay has the following reason:

9 ... is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

 

I'll repost my answer as a quote - it is not possible, nor useful, to answer those questions without considering the CONTEXT. Peter is dealing with the real situation that existed before the destruction. Paul dealt with a related situation in 1 Thes. 4 concerning believers who had died.

Peter is NOT using figures of speech regarding time; he is emphasising both God's gracious patience & the certainty of Christ's coming in judgment, both for the destruction & for final resurrection & judgment & to establish the NH&NE.

 

This is an artificial man-made rule of convenience for literalists to say that metaphors have to be explained or otherwise they must be literally understood. Some are explained and some aren't. Shall we discuss some metaphors, especially in the OT, that are not "explained right in the text"?

Your passage says nothing about God being outside of time. Whither He is or isn't is not the issue. The idea is that God is faithful in whatever He promises or threatens - whether the the thing promised happens in a day or a thousand years. That is, after all, what the naysayers were basically saying, "Look. All these years and nothing has happened that was prophesied." But Peter in effect tells them that time is not at all a factor in His fulfilling His promises. It will happen in His good time.

And, John, if you sincerely want discussion don't start with being demeaning to your opposition.

 

Before I forget, I think "1,000 is a simile. There was a party scene in "A Christmas Carol" where everyone was playing a game called "Similies". In the game, they would compare things - e.g. "as tall as...", and the answer would be "a mountain". Since we have the phrase "a day is like", and a day is different from a century or a millennium, this makes sense to me.

I am not saying that it's not important to know the difference between literal vs symbolic passages in Scripture. At the Last Supper, Jesus said the bread and the wine were His body and blood. Catholics take that literally, where most Protestants take it symbolically. What I am saying is that it doesn't make any real difference whether we understand the millennium to be literal or figurative. Either way, it's a very long time. If you point your finger at me and say "bang", I laugh; but I'll take a different action if you point that Glock at me. However, there is nothing I do differently whether the millennium is literal or symbolic. For that matter, there is nothing I do differently now as a Preterist vs when I held to a Futurist view.