2 Peter 3:3-7

Amplified Bible

The Coming Day of the Lord

³First of all, know [without any doubt] that mockers will come in the last days with their mocking, following after their own human desires ⁴and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming [what has become of it]? For ever since the fathers fell asleep [in death], all things have continued [exactly] as they did from the beginning of creation.” ⁵For they willingly forget [the fact] that the heavens existed long ago by the word of God, and the earth was formed ^[a]out of water and by water, ⁶through which the world at that time was destroyed by being flooded with water.^(A) ⁷But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly people.

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Footnotes

2 Peter 3:5 Peter is not referring to the creation of earth from water, but to the appearance of land masses from the water that had covered the earth in the early stages of creation. His point is that the mockers who will claim that things continue to be just as they always have been will be overlooking the fact that the status quo, as they see it, took an act of God to create in the first place, and God has already intervened in the history of the world once to wipe out mankind by a cataclysmic flood (v 6; cf Gen 6; 7).