Our Daily Homily, 2nd Peter
An entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly - 2 Peter 1:11
There are two ways of entering a port. A ship may come in, waterlogged and crazy, just kept afloat by continual working at the pumps, or it may enter with every sail set, her pennon floating at the masthead. The latter is what the apostle desires for himself and those whom he addresses. He desired that an entrance abundant should be ministered unto them.
An abundant entrance is really a choral entrance. The idea may be illustrated from the entrance of a Roman conqueror to his city, whence he had been sent out to war. Amid the crowds of spectators, the procession climbed slowly to the capital, while sweet incense was poured on the air, and music raised her sweetest and most inspiring strains. Will your entrance into heaven be like that? Will you enter it, saved so as by fire, or to receive a reward? Will you come unrecognized and unknown, or be welcomed by scores and hundreds to whom you have been the means of blessing, and who will await you? Will your coming make music right through the home of God? This is the meaning of the choral entrance. It reminds us of those words of Christ about the friends whom we have made by the right use of money welcoming us into eternal habitations.
The conditions on which that choral welcome will be afforded are clearly enunciated here. Look back to 2Pe 1:5-6 (R.V.). There the identical word of the choir occurs again, translated " supply." It is as though these eight Christian graces composed the octave choir, and that our diligence in acquiring and cultivating these will be rewarded hereafter by the choral welcome into the eternal kingdom of the Lord Jesus. Wherefore give diligence.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly - 2 Peter 2:9
The following authentic story will best illustrate and enforce this text. I give it as it was given to me by a friend who had verified the circumstances during a visit to Blankenburg. A godly Lutheran pastor, Sander, of Elberfeld, had been compelled to rebuke an evil-liver for some gross sin, and had thereby attracted to himself his malicious hate; and the man vowed to repay him. One night the pastor was called to visit a house that could only be reached by passing over a plank which bridged an impetuous torrent. Nothing seemed easier to his enemy than to conceal himself on the bank till the man of God was returning from the opposite end of the plank, to meet him in the middle, throw him into the deep and turbid stream, leaving it to be surmised that in the darkness he had simply lost his foothold. When, however, from his hiding-place he caught sight of the pastor's figure in the dim light, he was surprised to see that he was not alone, but accompanied by another. There were two figures advancing toward him across the narrow plank, and he did not dare attempt his murderous deed. And as they passed his hiding-place, the one whom he did not know cast such a glance toward him as convinced him of the sinfulness of the act he had contemplated, and began a work in his heart which led to his conversion.
When converted, he sought out the pastor, to confess to him the murderous intention which had so nearly mastered him, and said: "It would have been your death had you not been accompanied." "What do you mean?" said the other; "I was absolutely alone." "Nay," said he, "there were two." Then the pastor knew that God had sent His angel, as He sent him to bring Lot out of Sodom.
One day is with the lord as a thousand years - 2 Peter 3:8
There is no succession of time with God: no past, no future; He dwells in the eternal present, as I AM. As we may look down from a lofty mountain on a stream in the valley beneath, tracing it from its source to its fall into the ocean, and feeling that each part of it is equally distant from the spot where we stand, so must time appear to the Eternal; who was, and is, and is to come.
One day is as a thousand years. - He could do in a single day, if He chose, what He has at other times taken a thousand years to accomplish. Do not say that He will require so long to do this or that - to restore or convert the Jews; to introduce the millennial age; to undo the effects of the Curse, and fill the years with blessing. Do not say that He must have as long to make the second heavens and earth as the first. Do not say that the overthrow of the empire of darkness, and the conversion of multitudes to God, can only be achieved by the processes which are now in vogue. All this could be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye; and between sunrise and sunset God could effect the work of a thousand ordinary years.
A thousand years as one day. - Periods that seem so long to our finite minds are not so to God. A thousand years in our reckoning is but a day in His. You say it is nearly two thousand years ago since Jesus died, or at least that we are in the evening of the second thousand. But in God's reckoning, the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection, took place in the morning of yesterday. Take wider views of God's horizon; believe in His mighty march throughout the centuries; He takes up the isles as a very little thing, and the centuries are the beats of the minute-hand.