So, too, there is a revelation from Heaven of the Divine Wrath against every form of ungodliness and wickedness on the part of those men who, by their wicked lives, are stifling the Truth.
Brothers, for fear that you should think too highly of yourselves, I want you to recognize the truth, hitherto hidden, that the callousness which has come over Israel is only partial, and will continue only till the whole Gentile world has been gathered in.
And what if God, intending to reveal his displeasure and make his power known, bore most patiently with the objects of his displeasure, though they were fit only to be destroyed,
For at the Bar of the Christ we must all appear in our true characters, that each may reap the results of the life which he has lived in the body, in accordance with his actions--whether good or worthless.
These persecutions will vindicate the justice of God's judgment, and will result in your being reckoned worthy of God's Kingdom, for the sake of which you are now afflicted;
again God fixed a day. 'To-day,' he said, speaking after a long interval through the mouth of David, in the passage already quoted-- 'If to-day you hear God's voice harden not your hearts.'
Your gold and silver are rusted; and the rust on them shall be evidence against you, and shall eat into your very flesh. It was fire, so to speak, that you stored up for yourselves in these last days.
The Lord, therefore, knows how to deliver the pious from temptation, and to keep the wicked, who are even now suffering punishment, in readiness for 'the Day of Judgment'--
But the present heavens and earth, by the same fiat, have been reserved for fire, and are being kept for the day of the judgment and destruction of the godless.
and that even those angels, who did not keep to their appointed spheres, but left their proper homes, have been kept by him for the judgment of the Great Day in everlasting chains and black darkness.