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Reluctant Judgement - 2 Peter 2:4-6

2 Peter 2:3
3 In their greed they will make up clever lies to get hold of your money. But God condemned them long ago, and their destruction will not be delayed.

This verse was part of the last post, but it needs to be mentioned again here because it sets up the subject for the rest of chapter 2. This verse is saying that God is fully aware of false teachers and has plans to execute severe judgement on them.

If that is true, then why do these people seem to get away with what they are doing. Why does God allow them to continue to spew thier deceptions? I look around and see them prospering, not being destroyed! Doesn't God care that there are so many people being duped by these clever snakes? What could be the purpose of allowing so many false teachers to have influence on so many people?

These are the questions that I can imagine that the apostles were getting from the true believers of his day. Chapter 2 is Peter's (and God's) answer to the apparent inaction on God's part. Let's look at the first section of chapter two, which is acctually one gigantic run-on sentence that begins in verse 4.

Peter 2:4-7
4 For God did not spare even the angels who sinned. He threw them into hell, in gloomy pits of darkness, where they are being held until the day of judgment. 5 And God did not spare the ancient world—except for Noah and the seven others in his family. Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment. So God protected Noah when he destroyed the world of ungodly people with a vast flood. 6 Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes. He made them an example of what will happen to ungodly people.

Simplified...
Here are some examples of how God has intervened in the course of history to execute judgment. God dealt with rebellious angels in Noah's time. Genesis 6:1-8, He dealt with the human race when God flooded the entire earth, and he dealt with the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when the poeple there became utterly sinful. These are examples for us to see that God has and will judge the ungodly.

The bible describes a heavenly father that is unbelievably patient with the creatures that he has created that rebel against him. Occationally, we see God deal out judgement on earth. We know that everyone will be judged in the time after this existance (Hebrews 9:27). I must rest in the knowledge that God is firmly in control of events and whether false teachers are judged now and hereafter is God's business and not mine. I need to maintain an attitude of humility and gratitude, knowing that even though I am one of His children, I am also one of His creatures that sometimes rebels against him.

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