2 Peter 1:13

And I think it right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me.

These words flow out of the heart of a man who stood in full contemplation of impending death. The Lord Jesus himself had foretold Peter's death at the hands of others (John 21:18,19); and in the hostile climate of Nero's Rome, coupled with the fact of his then being an old man, and remembering that Jesus had said this would occur "when thou art old," Peter considered his own death to be something he could expect at any time swiftly."

Tabernacle ... This word actually means "tent," the same metaphor Paul used in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4; and one can almost see the trend of the apostle's thought in this and the following verses. Here he used the word "tabernacle," an expression he himself had used unfortunately on the mount of transfiguration (Matthew 17:4); and, a moment later, he used the word "'decease," the term used in the gospel of Luke to describe the topic of conversation on the same mount. It was doubtless the use of these very words that triggered the forthcoming reference to the transfiguration experience.

Inherent in the use of tabernacle as the soul's dwelling place is the permanence of the soul contrasted with that of the body.

The putting off of my tabernacle ... Peter was soon to die, but he viewed the destruction of his body as the same as "putting off" clothes, or pulling down a tent. "The word for `putting off' here is also in 1 Peter 3:21, another link between the two epistles."[40]

"These (2 Peter 1:13-15) are the words of a man for whom death is much in mind, and this would fit the 60's as the period when they were written."[41]

[40] B. C. Caffin, op. cit., p. 7.

[41] John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), p. 176.