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Eyewitnesses of His Majesty (2 Peter 1:16-18)

Scott Kercheville
01/29/23 - Sun AM

In Avengers: Infinity War and End Game the powerful titan-god Thanos gathers powerful “infinity stones” so he can “bring order” by killing half of the population of the universe. And he succeeds. He descends from the heavens in a mass invasion to snatch up the final infinity stone. As soon as he snatches up the final stone, he vaporizes billions of lifeforms in the snap of a finger — turning the universe upside down. Those left alive are stunned and struggle to pick up the pieces of their lives for years. But the good guys — the Avengers — concoct a gutsy plan to go back in time and reverse it all. And it seems like everything is going to work until everything starts falling apart. Thanos’ forces of darkness close in on the Avengers to extinguish the light forever. But just when all hope seems to be lost, suddenly, Captain Marvel bursts from the heavens to save the day. She obliterates enemies left and right allowing Iron Man to finally get his hands on the infinity stones so he can snap his fingers and restore what Thanos destroyed… at the cost of his own life.

These two films were extraordinarily popular across the world, topping the charts. They and movies like them capture this longing to be part of something much bigger than ourselves. In fact, I think it’s more like a knowledge that we are part of something much bigger. Don’t we feel to our core that evil is more terrible than we can see or estimate? That good is more beautiful than we can put into words? That what we do has cosmic significance beyond what we can touch or see? Don’t we feel that the darkness will keep fighting us, but that one day everything be put right somehow. Whether it’s the Avengers, Avatar, The Lord of the Rings, or the Chronicles of Narnia — there is this strong sense in all these stories that everything matters because everything is moving to a climactic end when good will triumph over evil.

The Greeks and Romans told heroic stories like these too: humans and gods in epic quests to fight evil and find our forever home. And success is dependent not only on the favor of the gods, but also on the humans making good, virtuous decisions along the way. And these stories plainly send the message that bravery and virtue have cosmic, lasting significance that will ripple through the centuries. The good or evil you do matters for future generations.

And we leave these movies and stories ready to take them into our real lives: don’t give up, keep doing the right thing and fighting evil, one day it will matter… unless we are unbelievers who scoff: it’s just a story, it doesn’t point to any Truth. In the ancient world, Epicureans scoffed at stories about final judgment and reckoning in the afterlife: they were just myths made by men to scare people into obeying someone else’s moral standard, and it ruins people’s happiness (cf. Bauckham, WBC Themes, 81). I think their philosophy impacts us today.

But Peter and the apostles brought the news that the long story of history had finally reached its climactic moment. The ancient dragon has ensnared the hearts of men and the whole world lies under his power, but the God we have all been waiting for is Jesus of Nazareth. He came to save his own and to reverse the curse in the world, but his own people failed to recognize him, and they killed him. But God raised him up never to die again. Now this man — the Son of God — has ascended to rule the cosmos from heaven. And he will come back one day in kingly glory to rescue those who wait for and serve him, and to repay with punishment those who do not bow the knee. What we do with our lives has cosmic meaning and eternal significance — and it all hinges on Christ.

And how easy it is to hear this back then and today like any other cleverly devised myth created to inspire and/or scare people into virtuous living. But, maybe somewhat unlike other story-tellers, Peter has not budged. He keeps telling this one story over and over again. And he has said here that he will not stop. He will remind and remind again the churches of the character they must pursue to receive a welcome into the eternal kingdom of Jesus in the end. Why does he keep telling this story? Read 2 Peter 1:16-18 with me.

Here’s Peter’s point in short: I remind you because our message that Jesus will powerfully come on the last day is no clever myth: we ourselves heard the Father declare from heaven that Jesus is the Son who will crush the rebels, and we saw firsthand the majesty with which he will come. Let’s walk through this.

Verse 16, he says when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, it was no cleverly devised myth. Peter uses the word parousia which, when referring to Jesus in the New Testament, it is used exclusively about his second coming. Peter is saying that he is not going to hesitate to keep reminding them to make every effort to grow in these qualities of faith, virtue, godliness, and love because the promise of Jesus’ powerful coming in the clouds is no clever myth. As Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1: Jesus will be “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” and granting “relief to you who are afflicted.”

We have been preparing for and anticipating his coming for nearly two thousand years. The promise that Jesus would come was so real to me when I was a child that I laid outside in the backyard and tried to peer around every cloud to see if I could find him. Is it really mature thinking to stop peering at those clouds in anticipation? Or is it one step away from treating the whole thing like a fable? There’s a reason entering the kingdom requires childlike faith — a child can hear and hope in his coming with wonder and excitement, and they’ll actually change what they do because of it. But maybe we try to grow up and not take it so seriously. But Peter wants to insist that this is no clever myth.

In verses 16-18 he cites what he saw and heard at the transfiguration event because this is proof Jesus will come in power. But why the transfiguration? Maybe we say, “Jesus became really white and bright for a moment. That’s great, but what does that have to do with the second coming?” Peter says, “His coming is no myth, because we saw his majesty.”

Peter alludes to Psalm 2 here when he uses the words “You are my Son” and “holy mountain.” In Psalm 2, David laments that the nations continually rebel against God and his appointed king. But God laughs at the rebel's plots and responds in wrath, saying: “I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” Then David tells us about the plan he heard Yahweh decree. God says to his king, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel,” (Ps. 2:7-9 ESV). In short, the earth is in rebellion, but God has appointed his Son to reign as king from God’s holy mountain — and he will rule until the ends of the earth are his possession, until every knee bows.

And as Peter thinks back to the transfiguration event on that holy mountain — the majestic brilliance of Jesus, the Father’s voice declaring Jesus to be his Son, himself along with James and John graveling on their faces before Jesus — he sees in his mind Psalm 2 playing out and a preview of the majesty Jesus will come with on that final day when he rules from Mount Zion, every enemy dashed into pieces, and the ends of the earth his possession.

And Peter is emphatic that they saw and heard this with their own eyes and ears. “We were eyewitnesses of his majesty” and “we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.”

One of the troubling trends over the past decade is how difficult it is to know what is actually true. Events are told to us from third, fourth, and fifth party perspectives. One news outlet reports, another broadcasts it with their spin, and every social media user suddenly becomes an expert disseminating their own half-baked reports. Fake news is a problem and so are those who use fake news labels. It can be very difficult be certain that we have the truth about the pandemic, vaccines, the election, incidents with the police, and so on. In many situations different understandings of what the facts are has lead to outrage. Other times, what is actually true is so uncertain us, we just agree to believe what we all want to believe about what has happened and then to make decisions based on it. But I think we can all agree — even in our postmodern, post-truth world — it matters what is true about these things. If we all knew what was really true, it would probably change a lot for us. But in the age of information we have loads of facts and knowledge, but not Truth or wisdom… so we agree to disagree and hope to move on in peace.

And honestly that’s all well and good when it comes to the events of the past three years — they won’t change that much in the grand scheme of things… but when it comes to the good news of Jesus and his promise to powerfully come in majesty on the last day, it’s not like that. Peter is insistent that we cannot treat this like a bit of uncertain news up for being interpreted privately however we like, or like a clever myth that can be accepted, or not as we see fit. Like the news in the good ‘ole days when they asked bystanders, “What did you see?” Peter is reporting to us what he saw and heard. And even better, he’s telling us the authoritative meaning behind it all: the majesty we saw and heard on that mountain is a guarantee that he’ll come in majesty on the last day.

What do you do when you know a day is coming when the true king will come from heaven and not a single person will be exempt from his judgment. What do you do when you saw a glimpse of the majesty he’ll come with on that day… but the majority of people would later ignore it like a myth? Or treat it like one man’s preferred religious opinion? You insist and remind and remind people to get ready: this was no myth, we were eyewitnesses.

C.S. Lewis is famous for referring to the Christian faith as the true myth. He tried to help people appreciate the story of Jesus in all its mythical proportions. After the enlightenment, many demythologized Jesus — stripping away his miracles to just embrace him as a nice, teacher of morality. And the church often has responded throughout the centuries by emphatically defending the reality of Jesus’ miracles — he really did them — but in constantly focusing on arguing that all these things really happened, the church has often forgotten to be captivated by the story of Jesus like we are captivated by a myth. The church forgot to imagine and interpret the beauty of the story of Jesus — it became familiar, true, and boring. And so in his writings, Lewis wrote clever stories to try to surprise his readers with the wonder in the true story of Jesus. He tries show us that the truth is like, but even better than the myths men have made.

We can become discouraged or even start doubting when we constantly encounter people who treat Jesus’ future coming like a clever myth. But consider looking at it from another angle. People equate Jesus and the coming of his eternal kingdom with a clever myth that people want to believe. Many don’t dismiss it as a bore no one wants to pay attention to; rather, they’re saying it is too big, too exciting, too monumental, beautiful, scary, good, and heartwarming to be true. It’s everything we could ever want, so it’s a fairy tale.

But what if the whole world was captivated by those Avengers movies with Thanos’ apocalyptic destruction and the Avengers’ heroic victory over evil not because everyone wants to deceive themselves with a fairy tale… what if stories like that feel so powerful to us because we all know deep in our hearts that history is destined to close out with greatness like that. What if myths like these capture our imagination because God has put a feeling deep in our bones that we are more significant than to die like animals. Because we know if life on earth ends with a random asteroid or an unfortunately large sun flare, that would be an end so meaningless that it simply will never be true. What if movies like these are powerful because we know deep inside that evil is too malicious and powerful to be ignored and that good is too great — it must win out in the end and go on forever. Love is just too weighty to end — ruined beyond repair and redemption. Maybe movies with happy endings are so powerful because there’s still a part of us from God that knows there’s a time and place coming where everything works out. We keep probing space because we’re looking for something more — maybe it’s that hero who’s supposed to be out there somewhere, and who’s supposed to come in the clouds to set everything right.

What if our delight in all these myths is a sign that we’re longing for the day when the true myth — the gospel of Jesus — becomes sight? It’s not that all these other stories are too good to be true — it’s just that they’re not good enough, and they all point to the ache we feel because we know the real story isn’t finished yet. These myths point out holes in our hearts that God very much intends to fill in the reality that is Jesus Christ and his coming. And Peter’s telling us good news: we are eyewitnesses of his majesty and he will powerfully come again in that same majesty to set all things right and make all things new.

May we hope in Jesus’ coming with all its mythical proportions… by preparing with all diligence. Day by day we are not just moving bits of matter here and there in an ultimately meaningless universe. The day of judgment is coming. And for some that will be a terrifying day; for others it will be a day of great delight. And according to Peter, the divine power of Jesus has given us everything we need to live godly lives so that on that day, we’ll be welcomed into his kingdom. There is cosmic significance to our daily decision to get up and delight in the Lord, trust him, do our work, make virtuous decisions, and grow in knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. Let us make every effort, because Jesus’ coming will blow every single man-made myth out of the water.