For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. If it begins first with us, what will happen to those who don't obey the Gospel of God?
And it worked out exactly as Peter prophesied.  The Neronian persecution soon ended in the shameful, wretched death of Nero; but his successors went on to put down a Jewish insurrection, which ended in the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem and over a million of the Jews by Vespasian and Titus, A.D. 70, only five years after Peter wrote these lines.  Thus the ancient chosen people, who had an opportunity to procure both for themselves and for the Christians a permanent status of legality in the pagan empire, stubbornly opposed it for Christians, little seeing that by so doing they were also eventually making outlaws of themselves.  Peter foresaw that and accurately foretold here the onset and progress of the holocaust.