Says Peter: “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in holy acts of conduct and deeds of godly devotion, awaiting and keeping close in mind the presence of the day of Jehovah.” (2 Pet. 3:10-12) If we were to fear the arrival of Jehovah’s day with all its awesome accompaniments, we would not be awaiting it and keeping it close in mind, but would be wishing to postpone it into the indefinite future beyond our lifetime, beyond “this generation.” We shall not need to fear its becoming a present reality if we are sincerely performing “holy acts of conduct and deeds of godly devotion.”

3. In our repentance toward the God of the New Order, what have we done, and what do we desire in contrast with the unrighteousness of the old order?

³ Are we that “sort of persons”? Genuine repentance toward God, who has promised the righteous new order, should have led us to be that sort of persons, with works befitting repentance. In our repentance toward God we have dedicated ourselves to him through Christ and symbolized that dedication by water baptism. We have done so because we really love Jehovah God and we love the righteousness for which He stands. We want to be deserving of His new order of things. Due to the fact that this different order of things will present a combination of “new heavens and a new earth,” we love the righteousness that is to dwell in those new things. We wholeheartedly desire to be admitted into such a clean new order. We find no pleasure or satisfaction in the unrighteousness of the imperfect, corrupt, doomed order of things.

4. (a) How will the world try to get us away from our “holy acts of conduct and deeds of godly devotion”? (b) Under even what coming circumstances will we refuse to deal compromisingly with the world?

⁴ We are so devoted to the Creator of the “new heavens” and “new earth” that we disdain all popularity with the “world of ungodly people” and we seek his pleased approval of us. By ridicule or threats the world will try to frighten us away from “holy acts of conduct and deeds of godly devotion”; that failing, the world will try to allure us away from our righteous course that condemns it as out of harmony with God. But with our faces firmly fixed upon God’s new order of righteous living we do not let ourselves be attracted by what the doomed system of things has to offer. We forge right ahead in the holy pathway that God has marked out for us.

7. According to Peter, our being a part of God’s living trophy will depend upon our being found by Him in what state finally?

⁷ What a great privilege it will be for anyone to be a part of that living trophy testifying to Jehovah’s triumph in the “war of the great day of God the Almighty” at Har–Magedon! (Rev. 16:14, 16) As far as we are concerned, God’s assignment of this privilege will depend upon “what sort of persons” he finds us to be on that world-changing “day of Jehovah.”