during the two hundred years before Christ that the Septuagint had been in

use, for in such passages as Deuteronomy 30:4; Nehemiah 1:9; Psalm 147:2;

diaspora is used of the `outcasts of Israel'.  As we shall have occasion to

compare some of the language of Peter with the Gospel according to Mark, it

will be well to make sure that the reader is aware of the close association

of these two servants of the Lord.

From Acts 12:12 we learn that Peter was friendly with Mark's mother and

in 1 Peter 5:13 he speaks of `Marcus my son'.  Jerome speaks of both Paul and

Peter with their assistants thus:

`Therefore he (Paul) had Titus for a Secretary, as the blessed Peter

had Mark, whose Gospel was composed by him after the dictation of

To this may be added the testimony of Eusebius:

`After the departure of Peter and Paul, Mark the disciple and secretary

(hermeneutes or "interpreter") of Peter, transmitted to us in writing

what Peter had preached'.

The four Gospels, therefore, stand related to one another as follows:

A

B

Interpreter of Peter.

B

Fellow worker with Paul.

A

We are now free to examine 2 Peter 3, and we shall remember as we do

it, that Peter, the minister of the circumcision, admits in that same chapter

that the apostle Paul has many things to say, which were hard to be

understood both by himself and his hearers, and we shall not expect to find

the sweep backward beyond Gen. 1:2 in Peter's most far -flung statement, that

we find in Paul's great epistles of the Mystery.  We must now make a

preliminary inquiry into the testimony of 2 Peter 3:1 -14 and discover the

scope of Peter's Ministry and epistle.

We note that chapters 1 and 2 must be considered as introductory, for

it is chapter 3 that opens with the words, `this second epistle, beloved, I

now write to you', and the burden of the chapter is the denial by `scoffers'

of the possibility of the Lord's return by an appeal to a supposed

`Uniformity of Natural Law', and the exposure of the weakness of this

objection by the apostle.  An examination of the first chapter will show that

this was prominently in the apostle's mind all the time.  2 Peter 1:16 -21 is

an anticipation of 2 Peter 3:2,3 and 2 Peter 2:1 -22 is an anticipation of 2

Peter 3:3 -13 and correspond in the structure which will be given later.

These selfsame scoffers, or their predecessors, had evidently charged

the believer who expected the personal return of the Lord, with following

`cunningly devised fables' (2 Pet. 1:16), and from this the apostle proceeds

to the nature and trustworthiness of prophecy, recalling in passing the

conviction he himself had received of its truth when upon the Mount of