The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 354: Partakers of the Divine Nature (2025)
20 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What does it mean to be a partaker of the divine nature?
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension.
Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 354. Day 354, we're all reading the entire second letter of St. Peter, chapters 1 and 2 and 3, as well as the conclusion of the first letter of St.
Paul to the Thessalonians, chapters 4 and 5, as well as Proverbs chapter 30, verses 17 through 19. As always, the Bible translation I'm reading from is the Revised Standard Version, 2nd Catholic Edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a year.
Chapter 2: How does baptism transform our identity in Christ?
You can also subscribe in your podcast app to this podcast because why not keep making this announcement here in the final days leading up to our conclusion of our scripture and our second trip around the sun and second trip around through the Bible. It is day 354. We're reading 2 Peter chapters 1, 2, and 3, 1 Thessalonians chapters 4 and 5, and Proverbs chapter 30 verses 17 through 19.
The second letter of Peter, chapter one, Salutation. Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. the Christian's call and election.
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers of the divine nature.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. Amen.
Chapter 3: What warnings does Peter give about false prophets?
Amen. Amen. Amen. so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these things, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have.
I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to arouse you by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. And I will see to it that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things. Eyewitnesses of Christ's glory.
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of the second coming of Christ?
We heard this voice born from heaven for we were with him on the holy mountain and we have the prophetic word made more sure. You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
First of all, you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Chapter two, false prophets and their punishment.
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. and many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them, the way of truth will be reviled. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words.
From of old, their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep. For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment.
Chapter 5: How should Christians respond to grief and loss?
If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven other persons, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction and made them an example to those who were to be ungodly.
And if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked. For by what the righteous man saw and heard as he lived among them, he was vexed in his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds.
Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they are not afraid to revile the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a reviling judgment upon them before the Lord.
But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed, reviling in matters of which they are ignorant, will be destroyed in the same destruction with them, suffering wrong for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes reveling in their dissipation, carousing with you.
They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin.
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Chapter 6: What does Paul teach about living a life pleasing to God?
They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children. Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Baor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression. A speechless donkey spoke with the human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.
these are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm for them the deepest gloom of darkness has been reserved for uttering loud boasts of folly they entice with licentious passions of the flesh men who have barely escaped from those who live in error They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.
For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.
Chapter 7: How can we test prophecies and discern truth?
It has happened to them, according to the true proverb, the dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed, only to wallow in the mire. Chapter 3 The Promise of the Lord's Coming This is now the second letter that I have written to you, beloved.
And in both of them, I have aroused your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. First of all, you must understand this, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, where is the promise of his coming?
For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation. they deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God, heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
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Chapter 8: What final exhortations does Paul give to the Thessalonians?
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up.
Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved and the elements will melt with fire? But according to his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Final Exhortation and Doxology Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace, and count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. So also, our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters.
there are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware, lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.
Amen. The first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians.
Chapter four, a life pleasing to God. Finally, brethren, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that as you learn from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are now doing, you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathens who do not know God, that no man transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things as we solemnly forewarned you.
For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. But concerning love of the brethren, you have no need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. And indeed, you do love all the brethren throughout Macedonia.
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