If 2 Peter 3 Is About AD 70, Why Does Peter Ignore 586 BC?

As I have been finalizing my sermon for this Sunday on the opening verses of 2 Peter 3, an old question of mine resurfaced. It is a question that nagged me even when I once held to a preterist interpretation of this chapter, though its force did not fully register until years later.

If 2 Peter 3 is describing a coming of Christ in AD 70 to destroy Jerusalem and the Temple, then Peter’s logic should reflect that scenario. If the scoffers are supposedly rejecting a prediction about Jerusalem’s impending judgment, then the clearest and most compelling rebuttal Peter could offer would be the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BC. That is the most obvious historical parallel: a Temple in Jerusalem destroyed in judgment. Nothing else even comes close.

Yet Peter does not appeal to that precedent. He goes straight to the flood.

To see how strange this is, imagine the conversation as the preterist interpretation requires us to imagine it:

Peter: Scoffers will come in the last days, scoffing at the idea that Christ will soon come to destroy Jerusalem and its Temple, following their own sinful desires.

Scoffers: Where is this promised coming and this destruction of the Temple? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things in Jerusalem(?) continue as they have from the beginning of creation.(?)

Peter: They deliberately overlook this fact: that long ago the heavens existed, and the earth was formed out of water by the word of God, and that by means of this same word the world that then existed was flooded and perished. By that same word the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire until the day of judgment.

The problems become obvious.

First, the scoffers’ claim that “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” makes no sense in a Temple-centered interpretation. Jerusalem did not exist from the beginning of creation. The only way to make their objection fit would be to argue that “creation” refers to the building of the Temple, a move that is linguistically and contextually untenable because Peter goes back to the actual creation of the heavens and the earth in his rebuttal. His appeal to the formation of the world and to the cosmic judgment of that world through the flood shows that “creation” in the scoffers’ mouth carries its normal, literal sense.

Second, Peter’s response makes no sense if the issue is a Temple destruction. He does not say, “You overlook the fact that God already destroyed the former Temple once.”

That would be the exact, parallel example. The one historical precedent that matches the alleged prediction is the Babylonian destruction in 586 BC. If Peter intends to prove to scoffers that God can and will destroy a Temple in Jerusalem, why would he ignore the one time when God did exactly that?

Instead he says, “They deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed… through which the world that then existed was deluged and perished.”

Peter bypasses the clearest national parallel and appeals to the most cosmic judgment in biblical history. He reaches for an event that reshaped creation itself, because the objection he is answering concerns the stability of the created order itself.

This is precisely why the preterist reading breaks down. The scoffers’ objection does not match a Temple-centered interpretation. Peter’s rebuttal does not match it either. The pieces do not fit, because the subject is not the destruction of Jerusalem. Peter is arguing on a cosmic scale, answering a cosmic denial, and pointing to a cosmic precedent.