2:16 fill up their sins. God is longsuffering toward sinners, but there eventually is a limit. To the antediluvians, He warned: “My Spirit shall not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3), and finally sent the great Flood to cleanse the earth. He delayed giving the promised land to Abraham and his seed for four hundred years, because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Genesis 15:13-16), but the command was eventually given to Moses and Joshua to take the land and destroy them all (Deuteronomy 20:17). Today, “the Lord…is longsuffering to usward,…But the day of the Lord will come” (II Peter 3:9-10). In the case of the Jews of whom Paul was writing, they not only had slain their prophets and crucified Christ (I Thessalonians 2:15), but now were trying to keep the gospel of Christ from being brought, not just to themselves, but even to the Gentiles, so their iniquity, like that of the Amorites long before, was almost full. Not many years hence, their temple and city would be destroyed, and their people scattered all over the world for nineteen hundred years. One wonders how long God will yet be patient with once Christian, now pagan, America.