Hi James and Ellen,
2 Peter is a short treatise that was penned by a fisherman. About forty years earlier, the fisherman – whose name was Simon, one day had a teacher of a new belief paradigm tell him to stop what he was doing and to follow Him. Simon grew up in the town of Bethsaida. The town of Bethsaida is a fishing village that is located on the northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee. After the itinerate expositor – whose name was Jesus, told Simon to follow him, He changed Simon’s name – which means ‘one who has heard’, to Peter – which means ‘rock’. When Peter personally penned his 2 Peter circular letter – which was somewhere around 67 A.D., Peter had been remanded by Nero – who was the Roman Emperor at the time, to a dreary, dank dungeon in the city of Rome – where Peter knew that he was facing imminent martyrdom. Peter was somehow able to get this second dispatch to the Christ-follower communities where guys and gals who had escaped with their kids from the city of Rome – because of the appalling persecution that Nero and his followers where meting out on them because of their uncompromising acceptance of what Jesus had taught about Himself and why Jesus did what He did for them while being hung on and nailed to a cross, to the region of Asia Minor where they started up new Christ-follower fellowships. Just as Peter’s first letter was to be circulated between the different emergent Christ-follower communities in the region of Asia Minor, so was Peter’s second letter to be circulated. No one knows what happened with 2 Peter between when Peter was able to have it taken by a trusted confidant to the region of Asia Minor and when an early church leader – whose name was Origen, was the first guy to directly quote from it – which was around 250 A.D.
Even though Peter referenced knowing that Nero was going to soon kill him, Peter’s evident concern in his second circular letter to the embryonic Christ-follower communities in the region of Asia Minor is that that there has to be always an intentionality in constantly enabling guys and gals in the kinds of virtues that are expected to be in a guy or gal who publicly confesses his or her Christ-follower faith. Your grandpaa thinks that Peter was using his own life experiences of having literally walked with Jesus as Jesus meandered about the county of Israel’s Galilean department, the country of Israel’s Judean department and even through the country of Israel’s Samarian department as a base line to be as adamant as he was that for a guy or gal to experience spiritual growth that the guy or gal must actively pursue knowledge that is pertinent to his or her Christ-follower faith. Your grandpaa believes that Peter had been witness to and that accounts had been relayed to him about misguided false teachers doing whatever they could do to dumb down or disparage the belief paradigm that was based solely on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Your grandpaa believes that Peter had been told by someone who had recently visited Christ-follower fellowships that were in the region of Asia Minor that the spirit of apostasy had already embedded itself in the Christ-follower communities that were in the region of Asian Minor – because there were guys and gals who had once been faithful Christ-follower constituents who had turned their backs on the faith norms that they had once faithfully adhered to. Peter uses the three chapters in his 2 Peter missive to warn the Christ-follower guys and gals who were living in the region of Asia Minor to not to listen to the erroneous teachings of guys who were trying to sham them into believing such things as Jesus was not really going to return again to planet Earth, that there really is never going to be a day of judgment for each guy, gal and kid who has lived, is living and will live on planet Earth and that it is okay to live a life that is centered on oneself versus a life that is centered on God.
Peter communicates in his letter that he wants the Christ-follower guys and gals who were living in the region of Asia Minor to make seeking after knowledge a spiritual adventure versus an academic exercise. There is a sense that Peter used what he had learned from the life lessons that God had taken him through to teach him to persevere in his faith to tell the Christ-follower guys and gals who were living in the region of Asia Minor that as they accrue the knowledge that is useful for their born again faith, that they will experience a growing sense of peace and grace, that they will have fruitful, full lives, that they will have the tools to evade sin’s constant attempts to tarnish and defile lives and that it is a non-negotiable that they pursue knowledge if they really want to experience a growing understanding of what it is to be a Christ-follower. Your grandpaa’s critique of the Christ-follower fellowships that exists today in the United States is that many of these fellowships have adopted a socially driven mindset that guys and gals who are Christ-followers are to principally and proactively show an altruistic love for society’s perceived marginalized, that their only value of existence to other fellowships and to their own ‘church’ government oversight are being numbers on officially accepted member rolls or in helping to plant a daughter ‘church’. Many of these fellowships have acquiesced to self-seeking guys and gals who are using the guise of being spiritual in permitting these guys and gals to take over scheduled singing and preaching times to do self-aggrandizing. Your grandpaa does not see Christ-follower fellowships in the United States today esteeming knowledge impartation as having value.
2 Peter