Pay Attention to God’s Prophetic Word!

Highlights From Second Peter

JEHOVAH’S prophetic word, or message, is like a lamp shining in a dark place, and true Christians need to pay strict attention to it. That is not easy when false teachers try to promote apostasy. But it can be done with divine help. And we must steadfastly adhere to God’s word if we are to survive the rapidly approaching day of Jehovah.

The apostle Peter’s second inspired letter can help us to pay attention to God’s prophetic word. Peter wrote this epistle perhaps from Babylon in about 64 C.E. In his letter he champions God’s truth, warns fellow believers of the thieflike coming of Jehovah’s day, and helps his readers not to be led away by the error of law-defying people. Since the day of Jehovah is nearly upon us, we can benefit greatly from Peter’s inspired words.

Trust in the Prophetic Word

As Christians, we need to exert ourselves to display godly qualities and must pay attention to the prophetic word. (2Pe 1:1-21) To avoid becoming inactive or unfruitful, we need to ‘supply to our faith virtue, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godly devotion, brotherly affection, and love.’ When Peter saw Jesus transfigured and heard God speak about Christ on that occasion, the prophetic word was made more sure. (Mark 9:1-8) To that divinely inspired word we need to pay attention.

Guard Against Apostates

By paying strict attention to God’s prophetic word, we can guard against apostates and other corrupt individuals. (2:1-22) Peter warned that false teachers would infiltrate the congregation. However, Jehovah would render adverse judgment against these apostates, even as he judged the disobedient angels, the ungodly world of Noah’s day, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The false teachers despise God-given authority and entice the weak to join them in wrongdoing. It would have been better for such apostates not to have known “the path of righteousness than after knowing it accurately to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them.”

Jehovah’s Day Is Coming!

As those paying attention to the prophetic word in these last days, we must not allow ourselves to be influenced by ridiculers who mock the message about Jesus’ presence. (3:1-18) They forget that the God who has purposed to destroy this system of things destroyed the pre-Flood world. Jehovah’s patience should not be viewed as slowness, for he wants people to repent. This system will be destroyed in “the day of Jehovah” and will be replaced by the ‘new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness is to dwell.’ Therefore, we should do our utmost to be “spotless and unblemished and in peace.” Instead of being misled by false teachers, let us grow in knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Let us take Peter’s words to heart. Never fail to be on guard against false teachers. Live with an awareness that Jehovah’s day is coming soon. And always pay attention to God’s prophetic word.

[Box/​Picture on page 31]

Thrown Into Tartarus: Jehovah “did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tartarus, delivered them to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment.” (2 Peter 2:4) This is not the mythological Tartarus represented in Homer’s Iliad as an underground place where lesser false gods, Cronus and other Titan spirits, were imprisoned. The Biblical Tartarus is the abased, prisonlike condition into which God threw the disobedient angels in Noah’s day. (Genesis 6:1-8; 1 Peter 3:19, 20; Jude 6) “Dense darkness” results from their being cut off from spiritual light by God as outcasts from his family. As those reserved for his adverse judgment, they have only a dark outlook. Tartarus is a precursor of the abyssing that Satan and his demons will experience before the start of Christ’s Thousand Year Reign. Their destruction will occur after Jesus’ Millennial Rule.​—Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:1-3, 7-10, 14.

[Picture]

Zeus cast lesser gods into a mythological Tartarus

[Credit Line]

National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece