The Day That Comes Like a Thief

The same man wrote again, and the second letter does not sound like the first. It is shorter, and it is angrier, and it is written by somebody who knows he has not got long. Men had turned up in those towns teaching things he would not have had in the house, and charging for it.

“Simeon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to the people who have been given a trust worth exactly as much as ours. His own power has handed us everything we need for living, and for living God’s way. He has given us promises, precious ones and enormous ones, so that through them you can share in what God is like, having got clear of the rot that wanting puts into the world.”

So he gives them a list to climb. “Put everything you have into it. In your trust, supply goodness; in your goodness, knowledge; in your knowledge, keeping hold of yourself; in keeping hold of yourself, sticking it out; in sticking it out, living God’s way; in living God’s way, brotherly love; and in brotherly love, love. If these things are yours and keep growing, you will not sit about doing nothing. The man who has none of them is blind — screwing his eyes up at whatever is close to his face, and he has forgotten that his old sins were washed off him.” “So work all the harder, brothers, at making your calling and your choosing solid. Do these things and you will never trip.”

“I mean to keep reminding you of all this, even though you know it and are standing firm in the truth you have. As long as I am in this tent I think it right to stir you up by reminding you. And I know that the putting off of my tent is soon; our Lord Jesus Christ made that clear to me. So I will do what I can now, to make sure that after I have gone out you can still call these things to mind.”

“We were not following clever made-up stories when we told you about our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw how great he was with our own eyes. He was given honor and glory by God the Father, and we were on the holy mountain with him when the voice came out of the Splendor:” “This is my Son, my beloved. I am delighted with him.” “We heard that voice ourselves, carried down out of heaven. And you have the word of the prophets, firmer still. Pay attention to it like a lamp shining in a murky room, until the day breaks and the morning star comes up in your hearts. No prophecy was ever a man’s own untying of it. Nobody ever brought one because he decided to: people spoke from God because a holy spirit carried them along.”

Then the anger. “There were false prophets among the people back then, and there will be false teachers among you. They will smuggle in ruinous ideas — even saying no to the Master who bought them — and bring quick ruin down on their own heads. Plenty of people will copy their filthy ways, and the way of the truth will get a bad name because of it. They are greedy, and they will make merchandise of you with moulded words. Their judgment has been a long time coming, and it is not asleep.”

Then, to show them that God has always known how to do both things at once, he counts off three old stories: how God did not spare, and how God kept. “God did not spare messengers when they sinned. He threw them down into the dark and put them in chains of gloom, kept there for judging.” “He did not spare an old world either. He brought a flood over a world of people who would not have him — and he guarded Noah, the eighth of them, who kept on telling them what was right.” “He turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and threw them down, and set them out as a picture of what is coming; and he pulled Lot out of it — a right man, worn thin by the way those people lived, tormented in his own soul day after day by what he had to see and hear.” “So the Lord knows how to pull the devout out of a test, and how to hold the unrighteous for a day of judgment.”

“These men are bold, and they please themselves, and they do not tremble when they insult glories — where messengers, who are stronger and more powerful than they are, will not bring an insulting judgment against them. They insult whatever they know nothing about. They are like animals with no reason in them, born to be caught and destroyed.” “They count it a pleasure to feast in broad daylight. They are stains and blemishes, sitting down to eat with you and enjoying their own tricks while they do it. They never stop sinning, and they bait people who are not steady on their feet, and their hearts are trained up in greed. They left the straight road and went wandering off down the road Balaam took — the son of Bosor, who loved the pay for doing wrong.” And there is the donkey. Balaam’s own beast of burden, who had never said a word in her life, spoke to him with a human voice, and stopped the prophet’s madness where he stood.

“These men are springs with no water in them, and mists that a squall blows to pieces. They talk swollen-up nothing, and they use it to bait people who are only just getting clear of the ones who live in error. They promise them freedom, and they are slaves themselves — because whatever beats a man is what owns him.” “If people have got clear of the filth of the world by coming to know our Lord and Rescuer Jesus Christ, and then get tangled in it again and beaten by it, they are worse off at the end than they were at the start. It would have been better for them never to have known the way of what is right than to know it and turn their backs on the holy command handed to them.” And he finishes with two rude proverbs: a dog going back to its own vomit, and a washed pig going straight back to the mud.

The last part of the letter is about people laughing. “Remember what the holy prophets said beforehand, and what the Lord and Rescuer commanded through your apostles. Know this first: in the last days there will be mockers, mocking, going after whatever they want, and saying:” “Where is this coming he promised? Our fathers died, and everything carries on exactly as it has since the beginning.” “They forget, because they want to forget, that there were heavens long ago, and an earth standing out of water and through water at the word of God, and that the world of that time was flooded and perished. The heavens and the earth there are now are being kept by that same word, stored up for fire, until the day of judgment.”

“Do not let this one thing get past you, beloved: one day with the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, whatever some people call slow. He is being patient with you. He does not want anybody to be lost. He wants everybody to have a change of mind.” “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will go with a roar, and the elements will burn and dissolve, and the earth and the works in it will be found. Since all of it comes apart like that — what sort of people ought you to be? Live holy lives. Live God’s way. Look for the day of God, and hurry it on. And we are waiting, because he promised it, for new heavens and a new earth, with righteousness living in them.” “So while you are waiting for these things, beloved, work hard at being found by him with no spot and no mark on you, at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as rescue.”

“Our beloved brother Paul wrote to you as well, with the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he talks about this. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, and people who have not learned much and are not steady twist them — the way they twist the rest of the Scriptures too, and it ruins them.” “So you know it beforehand, beloved. Guard yourselves. Do not let the error of lawless people carry you off and knock you off your own footing. Grow instead — in favor, and in knowing our Lord and Rescuer Jesus Christ.”

There is one more short letter, and it is not Peter’s. It is from a man called Judas — Jude, to keep him apart from the other one — and he calls himself a slave of Jesus Christ and the brother of James. It is short and it is furious. “Beloved, I was doing everything I could to write to you about the rescue we share. Instead I have had to write and beg you to fight for the faith that was handed over, once, to God’s holy ones. Certain people have slipped in — ungodly men, who turn the favor of our God into an excuse for filth, and say no to our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.”

He reminds them, fast, of three things they already know: that the Lord saved a people out of Egypt and then destroyed the ones who would not trust him; that there were messengers who did not keep to their own place but left the home they were given, and are held in chains under the gloom for the judgment of the great day; and that Sodom and Gomorrah and the towns around them are set out where everybody can see them. And then he tells something strange. Michael, the chief messenger, was arguing with the Accuser, and what they were arguing about was the body of Moses. Michael could have said anything he liked. He would not throw an insult at him — not at him, not even then. He said four words and stopped. “The Lord rebuke you.” The men Jude is angry at insult whatever they do not understand.

Then he stops arguing and simply piles up pictures of them. “They went the way of Cain. They poured themselves out for pay, the way Balaam did. They were destroyed in a quarrel like Korah’s. They are the hidden rocks at your love feasts, eating with you and feeling nothing, shepherding themselves. Clouds with no rain, blown past by the wind. Trees in late autumn with no fruit on them, dead twice over, pulled up roots and all. Wild sea waves foaming up their own shame. Wandering stars, with the gloom of the dark kept for them forever.” He quotes Enoch, seventh from Adam, who he says spoke about men like these: “Look — the Lord came with his holy ten thousands, to bring judgment on everyone.” “These are grumblers. They find fault. They go after whatever they want. Their mouths are full of swollen words, and they flatter faces when there is something in it for them.”

“But you, beloved, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ told you beforehand — that at the last time there would be mockers, going after the ungodly things they wanted. These are the ones drawing lines to keep people out. They have souls and no spirit.” And then he turns round to the people he loves, and the letter goes quiet. “But you, beloved: build yourselves up on your most holy faith. Pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God. Wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, and for everlasting life.” “And have mercy on the ones who are wobbling. Some of them you will have to grab and pull straight out of the fire. Have mercy on the others in fear — hating even the shirt their bodies have stained.”

“Now to the one who is able to keep you from tripping, and to stand you in front of his glory without a mark on you, and glad — to the only God who rescues us, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and majesty and might and authority, before all time, and now, and forever. Amen.”