| Geneva Study Bible {3} And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. (3) The reason that these mockers pretend that the course of nature is as it was from the beginning, therefore the world was from everlasting, and shall be forever. People's New Testament 3:4 Where is the promise of his coming? This question is asked by the scoffers, as though the coming of Christ was so long delayed that all hope had ended. They take advantage of the disappointment to try to destroy faith. All things continue as they were. The scoffers assert that the regular order of natural continues right on as it was from the beginning. They forget the deluge. Wesley's Notes 3:4 Saying, Where is the promise of his coming - To judgment (They do not even deign to name him.) We see no sign of any such thing. For ever since the fathers - Our first ancestors. Fell asleep, all things - Heaven. water, earth. Continue as they were from the beginning of the creation - Without any such material change as might make us believe they will ever end. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary 4. (Compare Ps 10:11; 73:11.) Presumptuous skepticism and lawless lust, setting nature and its so-called laws above the God of nature and revelation, and arguing from the past continuity of nature's phenomena that there can be no future interruption to them, was the sin of the antediluvians, and shall be that of the scoffers in the last days. Where-implying that it ought to have taken place before this, if ever it was to take place, but that it never will. the promise-which you, believers, are so continually looking for the fulfilment of (2Pe 3:13). What becomes of the promise which you talk so much of? his-Christ's; the subject of prophecy from the earliest days. the fathers-to whom the promise was made, and who rested all their hopes on it. all things-in the natural world; skeptics look not beyond this. as they were-continue as they do; as we see them to continue. From the time of the promise of Christ's coming as Saviour and King being given to the fathers, down to the present time, all things continue, and have continued, as they now are, from "the beginning of creation." The "scoffers" here are not necessarily atheists, nor do they maintain that the world existed from eternity. They are willing to recognize a God, but not the God of revelation. They reason from seeming delay against the fulfilment of God's word at all. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 3:1-4 The purified minds of Christians are to be stirred up, that they may be active and lively in the work of holiness. There will be scoffers in the last days, under the gospel, men who make light of sin, and mock at salvation by Jesus Christ. One very principal article of our faith refers to what only has a promise to rest upon, and scoffers will attack it till our Lord is come. They will not believe that he will come. Because they see no changes, therefore they fear not God, Ps 55:19. What he never has done, they fancy he never can do, or never will do. | 
