• Title Page
• Pentateuch
• History
• Poetry
• Prophets
• Post Captivity Prophets
• Gospels, Acts
• Pauline Epistles
• General Epistles
  • Lesson 56: Hebrews
  • Lesson 57: James
  • Lesson 58: I Peter
  • Lesson 59: II Peter
  • Lesson 60: I John
  • Lesson 61: II and III John
  • Lesson 62: Jude
  • Lesson 63: The Revelation

case again the relation expressed between present suffering and future glory (I Peter 5:1), and also the time when this glory shall be experienced (I Peter 5:4).

6. To humility (I Peter 5:5-7). Observe the reason for humility, and the reward. Read I Peter 5:7 in the Revised Version, where anxiety is substituted for care. Care is almost always necessary, but anxiety on the part of a child of God is dishonoring to Him.

7. To watchfulness (I Peter 5:8-11). Observe the testimony in this case to the personality of Satan, the way in which he is to be with stood, and the comfort ministered in the thought that our afflictions through his machinations are neither singular nor unusual.

The epistle concludes with a superscription in which the name of another is mentioned as an amanuensis. Where have we seen that name before? For what two reasons has the epistle been written? Where does Peter seem to have been located at this time? Who was associated with him?

II Peter

The second epistle of Peter is the first of the New Testament books as to the canonicity or inspired authority of which there is any reasonable doubt. It was not mentioned by the earliest Christian writers, but this may be accounted for by the lateness of its appearance, and the further fact that it was not addressed to any local church with an interest in and facility for making its existence known. Its canonicity however, is doubted, on the further ground that there is a marked difference of style between it and Peter’s first epistle; but may it not be replied that there is a marked difference in the theme? The first was written to exhort and to testify, but this to warn and to caution (II Peter 3:1-2, 17-18), a circumstance quite sufficient for whatever difference in style could be pointed out. And then, too, Peter was not a stereotyped man. James might be supposed to keep to one style, but Peter hardly.

On the other hand there are certain points of genuineness which others have pointed out, such as similar and peculiar expressions in the two epistles, similar views of prophecy which will be noted, the writer’s testimony to his presence at the transfiguration, etc., all of which substantiate the Petrine authorship. It is not a subject we can consider here at any great length-enough for us to know that the book has been regarded as canonical by the whole church, with isolated exceptions here and there, for sixteen or seventeen centuries at least.