How Should We Then Live?
God's Word gives believers a clear, sobering reminder: history is headed toward a God-ordained destination. In this sermon, Dr. Rocky Ramsey explains how the “Day of the Lord” unfolds as a season that includes the rapture, the tribulation, the second coming, and ultimately the end of time itself.
Peter assures us that God is going to fix what sin broke and restore everything He originally intended. But while we wait, we are not called to idleness—we are called to holiness.
Dr. Rocky Ramsey outlines how Christians should live in light of God’s coming judgment and restoration: We should long for Christ’s return with expectation, value our time rather than resent it, guard our hearts from being led astray, and pursue lives marked by holiness. The end of the world is not meant to terrify believers—it’s meant to motivate them.
This passage reminds us that God has told us everything we need to know in order to live the way He wants us to live. The question is: Are we living like people who believe Jesus is coming again?
“But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”