Simon Peter, a bondservant and Apostle of Jesus Christ: To those to whom there has been allotted the same precious faith as that which is ours through the righteousness of our God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

seeing that His divine power has given us all things that are needful for life and godliness, through our knowledge of Him who has appealed to us by His own glorious perfections.

It is by means of these that He has granted us His precious and wondrous promises, in order that through them you may, one and all, become sharers in the very nature of God, having completely escaped the corruption which exists in the world through earthly cravings.

For the man in whom they are lacking is blind and cannot see distant objects, in that he has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his old sins.

For this reason, brethren, be all the more in earnest to make sure that God has called you and chosen you; for it is certain that so long as you practise these things, you will never stumble.

For I know that the time for me to lay aside my body is now rapidly drawing near, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to me.

But, above all, remember that no prophecy in Scripture will be found to have come from the prophet's own prompting;

(For their lawless deeds were torture, day after day, to the pure soul of that righteous man--all that he saw and heard whilst living in their midst.)

Their case is that described in the true proverb, "A dog returns to what he has vomited," and also in the other proverb, "The sow has washed itself and now goes back to roll in its filth."

so that you may recall the words spoken long ago by the holy Prophets, and the commandments of our Lord and Saviour given you through your Apostles.

But, above all, remember that, in the last days, men will come who make a mock at everything--men governed only by their own passions,

For they are wilfully blind to the fact that there were heavens which existed of old, and an earth, the latter arising out of water and extending continuously through water, by the command of God;

and that, by means of these, the then existing race of men was overwhelmed with water and perished.

The Lord is not slow in fulfilling His promise, in the sense in which some men speak of slowness. But He bears patiently with you, His desire being that no one should perish but that all should come to repentance.

That is what he says in all his letters, when speaking in them of these things. In those letters there are some statements hard to understand, which ill-taught and unprincipled people pervert, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own ruin.