Encouraging the people

2 On the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the Lord’s word came through Haggai the prophet: ² Say to Judah’s governor Zerubbabel, Shealtiel’s son, and to the chief priest Joshua, Jehozadak’s son, and to the rest of the people:

Delay of Christ’s coming in judgment

3 My dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both letters to stir up your sincere understanding with a reminder. ² I want you to recall what the holy prophets foretold as well as what the Lord and savior commanded through your apostles. ³ Most important, know this: in the last days scoffers will come, jeering, living by their own cravings, ⁴ and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? After all, nothing has changed—not since the beginning of creation, nor even since the ancestors died.”

⁵ But they fail to notice that, by God’s word, heaven and earth were formed long ago out of water and by means of water. ⁶ And it was through these that the world of that time was flooded and destroyed. ⁷ But by the same word, heaven and earth are now held in reserve for fire, kept for the Judgment Day and destruction of ungodly people.

Jesus and the Law

¹⁷ “Don’t even begin to think that I have come to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I haven’t come to do away with them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ I say to you very seriously that as long as heaven and earth exist, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will be erased from the Law until everything there becomes a reality. ¹⁹ Therefore, whoever ignores one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called the lowest in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps these commands and teaches people to keep them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ I say to you that unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the legal experts and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.