or to governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evil-doers and for praise to those who do well.
Suffering wrongfully. How we hate to do this, don't we? If we get punished when we are actually innocent, man, how we cry. I mean, I've had that happen to me. My father was, had a short fuse. I mean, he was very quick to react. He was a reactor. He was a responder and then he would think later.And my youngest brother would take advantage of this. Now he came along some seven years after me so he's just a little kid. We all loved him. I'm serious. I mean, my brother Bill, I loved him dearly. But he knew that being the little brother, he was sort of a Joseph in the family come lately. My dad said to my mom, If you will give me a redheaded freckle-face boy; buy you a Cadillac car. Well, he was born and he had red hair and of course, he developed freckles as he grew up. My mom never did get a Cadillac, but you know, promised her anything but give her our page. He did give her perfume. But my youngest brother would start screaming and my dad would come out, feeling off his belt and he'd belt my other brother and I. And after belting us, then he'd say, What happened?Well, my youngest brother, he'd just look at us and laugh. He'd say, I'm going to get you guys in trouble, you know. If you know we had done something he didn't like, okay, I'm going to get you and he'd start screaming. Dad would come up, give up the belting and then he'd say, All right, what happened? What happened? Well, we didn't do anything, you know. Why was he screaming? And then he'd find out and well, I'm sorry, you know, but. And boy, I mean, we would really make my dad suffer for that kind of stuff; you know, we were punished unjustly. Oh man, we would get all righteous indignation and just, you know, you did that. But you know, in reality, I did so many things I should have gotten belted for and he never found out. But I always figured I was still on the plus side, you know.Now Peter is saying, Look, if you deserve a spanking and you get one, and you take it patiently, so what? You had it coming. But if you don't deserve and yet you get a spanking and you take it patiently, hey, then that's acceptable. For God's sake you accepted graciously persecution or buffeting or things that come your way where you are really innocent. You don't have it coming. Rather than getting all upset and threatening and everything else, taking it patiently.