Maybe you heard about the three little old men who decided they’d go together to the doctor to have their mental capacity tested.
They shuffled slowly into the examination room where the doctor asked the first fellow: “What’s three times three?
“That’s easy … 101,” he responded.
The doctor, with a look of concern, then turned to the second fellow and asked: “What’s three times three?”
“Three times three is Wednesday,” he answered.
The doctor shook his head sadly and turned to the third man. “What’s three times three,” he asked.
“Nine,” the old fellow answered.
“That’s great,” the doctor said. “How did you get your answer?”
“Simple,” he said. “I subtracted 101 from Wednesday.”
Those fellows certainly had a unique approach to mathematics. Unfortunately, it was an entirely wrong approach.
You realize, wrong approaches aren’t limited to math equations. All too often it extends to spiritual matters, as well.
That’s why the Apostle Peter issued a strong warning to doubters. In his day, just as in ours, there were scoffers who doubted God’s Word, who refused to trust in Christ and who doubted that this world will one day come to a fiery end.
In Peter’s day, some folks had pointed to all the years that have passed without the end having come.
“Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” Peter wrote.
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
“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 Peter 3:8-10).”
Such a dire warning warrants serious consideration.
Peter urged the people of his day, as well as of ours, to decide how they should live their lives in light of that truth: “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be (2 Peter 3:11)?”
He supplied the answer: “Be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, blameless (2 Peter 3:14).”
That’s clear enough for even mathematically challenged old men to understand.
Roger Alford of Owenton, Kentucky, offers words of encouragement to residents of America’s heartland. Reach him at rogeralford1@gmail.com.
