2 Peter 3:5-6

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

Peter says the scoffers are not merely uninformed. They are willingly ignorant. That is a strong phrase. It means they do not just miss the truth. They push it away. They choose not to remember what would disturb the way they want to live.

That is still how unbelief often works.

A man says, “Everything has always gone on the same way.” Peter says, “No, it has not.” There was a time when the world stood secure, people married and worked and laughed and planned, and life seemed as steady as ever. Then suddenly the flood came, and the same world that looked so permanent was swept away.

You recall the story. Noah kept building while others kept scoffing. Year after year the sound of his labor must have been accompanied by the laughter of people who thought judgment was a joke. They had never seen rain fall as it would fall. They had never imagined the earth they trusted could become the means of their destruction. So they mocked the preacher and dismissed the warning.

Until the day the sky broke open.

That is Peter’s point. History itself answers the scoffer. The God who made the world by His word once judged the world by that same authority. Creation and judgment both stand under His command. Men may forget that. Men may deny that. Men may roll their eyes at it. But their denial does not change what happened.

And there is something sobering here. The same water that once sustained the earth became the instrument of its perishing. The world that seemed so stable was not stable at all when God rose to judge it. That means the confidence of the ungodly is always thinner than it appears.

Consider that. The scoffer’s great mistake is not merely that he laughs. It is that he forgets God has acted before.

That is why Peter reaches back to Noah. He is saying, in effect, “Do not tell me judgment cannot come because life feels normal. It came once when life felt normal then, too.” The laughter before the flood did not cancel the flood. It only made the flood more shocking when it arrived.

There is a warning here for our own hearts as well. We can grow dull simply because ordinary life keeps moving. Breakfast. Work. Bills. Errands. Family routines. Seasons passing. And because things seem unchanged, we start to think they always will be. But Peter says do not make that mistake. The seeming steadiness of the world is no proof against the word of God.

The same Lord who once judged a scoffing world has not changed.

So what should we do? Not panic. Not speculate wildly. But remember. Remember that God keeps His word. Remember that judgment is not an empty threat. Remember that mercy is offered now, just as it was in Noah’s day. And remember that the same Lord who warned then is warning still.

Saints, do not let the mood of the age make you forget what God has already shown. The flood stands as a witness that scoffing does not stop judgment and delay does not cancel truth. The Lord has spoken, and what He says will stand.