At a time when I thought eschatology just couldn't be deciphered, I'd say, "Peter and Paul already thought they were living in 'the latter days', so we can't call our own days the last in any special sense."
But long before Christians were studying prophecy, Hebrew scholars interpreted Psalm 90:4 as a key to human history:
"1,000 years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it has passed..."
2 Peter 3:8 is a quote from earlier commentaries on this verse:
"With YHWH, a Day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day."
They deduced that this meant there'd be 7,000 years of human history, the 7th and final 1,000-year "day" being a "Sabbath rest" for the whole earth after 6 "days" of labor and sorrow:
THE "WEEK OF AGES"
The seven 1,000-year "days" of the world were divided into 6 days of
- Olam ha Zeh ("This Age")
- The first 2 days: Tohu (Desolation)
- The second 2 days: Torah (Instruction)
- "The latter days" (anything after the 4th day)
- Y'mot Mashiach (Days with Messiah)
- Olam ha Ba ("The Coming Age") - the 7th day, the Sabbath Millennium
- Athid LaVo ("Stored up in preparation to Come") - The "8th" day (Beginning of a new week)
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This agrees with Revelation 20's statement that Y'shua would reign for 1,000 years--a sabbath for the world from its unrest and evil, then there would be a "new heaven and a new earth".
Today Judaism is often said to be a religion of the "now", with little to say about the hereafter. But this was far from the case in Y'shua's day. Every morning the priests' first prayer reminded them to keep the coming Messianic kingdom in mind as the backdrop for their daily activities. And from ancient times they have claimed to know when this will occur.
Let's look at a very ancient reference to the "latter days":
"The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek YHWH their Elohim and David their king, and shall fear YHWH and His beneficence in the latter days." (Hosea 3:4,5)
Hosea 6 mentions this same theme again:
"Come, let us return to YHWH, for He has torn, and He will heal us; He has struck down, but He will bind us up. After two days will He revive us, and the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight." (6:1,2)
The connection of resurrection with the third day reminds us of the Messiah's own resurrection. Indeed, Hosea 6 goes on to speak of His two comings:
"He shall come unto us as...the latter and former rain..."
But there is a less obvious application too. The days when Israel "sat desolate without a temple or priest" have gone since A.D. 70, near the beginning of the the "Days of Messiah".
Two days, according to this prophetic code, would be two thousand years. So after approximately two thousand years, YHWH will raise Israel back to her place of prominence ("on the third day"). That is, in the third millennium from the destruction of the Temple, the 7th millennium. The Jewish people have often seen this 7th millennium as a Sabbath rest, which the 7th day of the literal week was designed to foreshadow.
The earth was about 1,948 years old (since the Garden of Eden, at least) when Abraham was born and the concept of Israel was initiated. The "Days of Messiah" were 1,948 years old when Israel again became a nation!
Tradition says YHWH called him out of Ur at the age of 52. This would be exactly 2,000 years after creation. So the third day of the "week of ages" began with his call, and this is when the "age of Torah" was actually said to begin, even though it was about 500 years before YHWH gave the actual Torah to Moses. This is because the process of forming the nation of Israel began at that time. He was the first of the family that was specially set apart to be YHWH's channel of revelation.
So the "3rd day" began at the call of Abraham; the 4th began in the days of David, and the 5th, right around the time Y'shua was born. Before Judah in a corporate sense rejected Him, Jewish interpretations were very different from now: As we can see in the chart, they called the 5th and 6th "days" (the past 2,000 years) the "Days with Messiah"! And it turns out to have been true for the Northern Kingdom, which accepted Him while still in exile.
Anything after the fourth day is the latter part of a week. "Pentecost"--the feast of Shavuot described in Acts chapter 2--was early on the 5th day of this "week of ages", so Peter and Paul were indeed in the "latter days" after all.
The Messianic Kingdom in which all Israel is united does not come until the 7th day--into which we are now transitioning, though the use of different calendars throughout history has obscured the exact count of years. It is a Sabbath of rest for the earth that YHWH will, during this time, restore to what it was before Adam sinned.
The phrase "In That Day" is used many times by the prophets to denote this final "Day of YHWH", a time when His wrath would be fulfilled and Messiah would reign on David's throne. (This interpretation enables us to make sense of Y'shua's otherwise puzzling statement in John 16:23 about "That Day".)
This "1,000-year" approach also gives new meaning to "In the day that you sin, you shall surely die." Despite extreme longevity before the Flood, no one lived to be 1,000 years old. All died the same "day" they were born.
In biblical imagery, the number 8 often speaks of "new beginnings" after a complete sabbatical cycle. The "8th day" found in the feast of Sukkoth--added on in such a way as to extend the feast--represents eternity. That "day" is not necessarily 1,000 years, for years as we know them may be obsolete by then, if there is no sun left to count by! (Rev. 21:23)