Exposition of Scripture.
By Burder
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 2 Pet. iii, 10; See also Matt. xiv, 42–44. There is not only the most terrible sublimity and solemn grandeur, but also much philosophical propriety, in this description of the awful dissolution of the heavens and the earth; when “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up,—Wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” As the heavens mean here the whole atmosphere, in which all the terrestrial vapors are lodged; and as water itself is composed of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen; and as the electric, or ethereal fire, is probably that which God will employ in the general conflagration; the noise occasioned by the application of this fire to such an immense congeries of aqueous particles as float in the atmosphere, must be terrible in the extreme. A piece of iron red hot placed over a drop of water on an anvil, and struck with a hammer above the drop, will cause a report as loud as a musket; when, then, the whole strength of these opposite agents is brought into a state of conflict, the noise, the thunderings, and innumerable explosions, (till every particle of water on the earth and atmosphere, is by the action of the fire, reduced to its component gaseous parts,) will be frequent, loud, confounding and terrific, beyond every comprehension but that of God himself. When the fire has thus conquered and decomposed the water, the elements, the hydrogen and oxygen airs, or gases, will occupy distinct regions of the atmosphere; the hydrogen by its great levity ascending to the top, while the oxygen from its superior gravity will keep upon, or near, the surface of the earth; and thus if different substances be once ignited, the fire, which is supported in this case not only by oxygen, which is one of the constituents of atmospheric air, but also by a great additional quantity of oxygen obtained from the decomposition of all the aqueous vapors, will rapidly seize on all other substances, on all terrestrial particles, and the whole frame of nature will necessarily be torn in pieces; and thus “the earth and its works be burnt up.” It is probable, however, they will merely be all separated and decomposed, but none of them destroyed. And, as they are the original matter out of which God formed the terraqueous globe, they may enter again into the composition of a new system; and therefore the Apostle says, “We look for a new heaven and a new earth;” the other being decomposed, a new system will be formed from their materials. “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.”—Burder.