I have a question about the scoffers in 2 Peter 3:2-4. Are these scoffers the folks now who tend to frown on the idea of the Rapture of the Church (just kind of generically rolling their eyes at those who are pre-trib, I guess), or are they specific to the time just before the 2nd coming, scoffing in earnest?
Peter said this will be specific to the end times. These scoffers will deny the possibility of the Lord’s return based on their belief that life has always gone on without intervention from the Lord and will always continue to do so.
He said these people “deliberately forget” the fact that it was God’s intervention that caused the creation in the first place and it was His intervention that caused the flood that destroyed it. The truth is that God has periodically intervened in the affairs of man and will do so again, regardless of what these people think.
So he wasn’t speaking about people who frown on the idea of the rapture, but about those who deny the second coming altogether, and expect the world to just go on and on forever. Jesus said people from all around the earth will mourn when they see Him coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory (Matt. 24:30). They’ll mourn because they’ll finally realize they’ve been wrong and it will be too late for them to change their minds about Him.
The truth is there are more prophecies about the Lord’s Second Coming in the Bible than there were about His First Coming, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe they will remain unfulfilled. One of the clearest ones is in Acts 1:11. As the disciples were watching Jesus disappear into the sky, two men in white were suddenly standing there with them.
“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”