This is the third post in this series on the warning of destruction brought on with the twisting of Scripture.

What is it about Paul’s letters spoken of in our last post that has caused Peter to be speaking about God’s patience when he is dealing with Jesus’ Coming?

You should check out my research, but Paul will only speak concerning God’s patience when he speaks of God’s salvation in the one verse and His wrath in the other, and Peter references Paul’s use of God’s patience within a chapter on end time events. He does this in 2 Peter 3:10 “and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.” Paul did his speaking on God’s patience in Romans 2:4, and 9:22; every other time that Paul speaks of patience in his epistles, it is about our patience not God’s. So when Peter introduces Paul and patience into this conversation that he is having in second Peter, what is he saying? Is it that God’s patience with regard to Christ’s coming, is necessary for man’s salvation? What else might be meant by the fact that God shows patience by delaying His wrath? Paul and Peter both seem to see God’s patience concerning the delay related to an end of sin for us and wrath against those who have become God’s enemies. This patience is present to bring more of us into this so great salvation in order that we will miss His wrath? Is knowing all this helping to understand why Paul doesn’t broach the Rapture subject when he is speaking of his departure?

It certainly seems to me as though this teaching concerning delay or patience connected to last days events is what Peter is also alluding to when referencing Paul.

What most do not look at today is God’s patience in what only appears to us to be a delayed Second Coming. His coming is or has been delayed in our eyes, but it is not delayed for God. God is patient. This is the point. He knows the day and the hour by His own foreknowledge and He has for all eternity past known this one point in man’s time where His patience will run out. That will be on a fixed day. But what these ones, about whom Peter speaks, do look to almost continually is not His patience but His soon or imminent coming.

Would it be wrong to say that we, in fact, are not to look for Him until we see the signs? How many times have you heard preachers state that? Our looking up into the sky for His coming is meaningless unless we know that His coming is near. If this is understood, then we can see that much of our difficulty within Church teaching over this modern era has largely been due to an over emphasis on a false understanding of imminence.

But Scripture is what needs to be considered in order to understand what the Holy Spirit is teaching us concerning the timing of the Lord’s coming.

It is necessary that we look at what Paul says concerning end of days issues in order to understand if a delayed second coming is really displayed in his thinking, as Peter seems to imply when speaking of his teaching about God’s patience. I know that you need proof of this even as I did on my journey to leave dispensational teachings.

Peter says that any of these misunderstandings of Paul’s teachings on end time beliefs can even lead to ones destruction. How can that be? Don’t jump to a premature conclusion here. But that fact seems to be completely ignored today by eschatological (end Time) teachers. So the understanding about why this can be the case is thus also missing in the discussion. Our reasoning must be: How could it be that God would condemn a man over his mistaken understanding concerning His Son’s return? But is God’s condemnation really what Peter is saying in this warning? Is it really condemning one to tell them that they are on a road leading them to much sorrow, and that of their own choosing?

I’ll attempt to answer this question tomorrow. But for now I will ask you to consider whether or not it would be one’s own fault and not God’s doing, if this one were to fall as a result of the failure to heed God’s warnings from Scripture? Many times I find that the world attempts to make God and not the free will individual responsible, for their own sin.

There is one other point for us to consider concerning warnings: if Peter obeyed God with his warning to us concerning the twisting of Scripture, how then can we not do the same if we are walking in The Holy Spirit, rather than in the flesh as Paul tells us that we must do?