Names of the end; this world began and will end; against Didymus on three worlds

It is called συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος, the consummation of this age (Matthew 13:40 and 18:20); τέλος, end (Matthew 24:6, 14); harvest (Matthew 13:39 and Revelation 14:15–16 and Joel 3:13). This world, as it had a beginning, so also will have an end (Revelation 21:1; 2 Peter 3:5, 6, 7, 8, 12).

Nor is Didymus to be approved here, in his exposition on the canonical epistles, observing that mention is made here of a threefold world — of the ancient or past (verse 6), of the present (verse 7), and of the future after this one (verse 13) — which things he thinks were sprinkled into this epistle by heretics dreaming of several creations and periods of worlds. But this conjecture deceived him. For that Peter says the world perished by the flood sufficiently indicates that he is not speaking of three worlds diverse in essence, as the followers of Origen thought, but only pointing out that just as this world once began and was corrupted by water, so the same will sometime perish by fire.