What if God, though desirous to display his anger and show his might, has tolerated most patiently the objects of his anger, ripe and ready to be destroyed?
for certain persons have slipped in by stealth (their doom has been predicted long ago), impious creatures who pervert the grace of our God into immorality and disown our sole liege and Lord, Jesus Christ.
by hindering us from speaking words of salvation to the Gentiles. So they would fill up the measure of their sins to the last drop! But the Wrath is on them to the bitter end!
And consider that the longsuffering of our Lord means salvation; as indeed our beloved brother Paul has written to you out of the wisdom vouchsafed to him,
who had disobeyed at the time when God's patience held out during the construction of the ark in the days of Noah — the ark by which only a few souls, eight in all, were brought safely through the water.)