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.

Because by his power he has given us everything necessary for life and righteousness, through the knowledge of him who has been our guide by his glory and virtue;

through which to us the most great and precious promises have been given, that through these ye may become partakers of a divine nature, having escaped from the corruption in the world in desires.

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.

Wherefore, I will not be careless always to remind you concerning these things, though, having known them, and having been established in the present truth,

For we have not made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, following cleverly imagined fables, but having been eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For having received from God the Father the honor and glory of such a voice having been borne to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

And in their greed they will exploit you with false arguments and twisted doctrine. Their sentence [of condemnation which God has decreed] from a time long ago is not idle [but is still in force], and their destruction and deepening misery is not asleep [but is on its way].

For if God messengers who sinned did not spare, but with chains of thick gloom, having cast them down to Tartarus, did deliver them to judgment, having been reserved,

These, however, as unreasoning creatures that have been bred as being, by nature, for capture and destruction, in the things they are ignorant of, uttering defamation, in their spoiling, shall also be made a spoil, -

having eyes full of an adulteress, and unable to cease from sin; beguiling unestablished souls: having a heart which has been made fat with covetousness; children of the curse:

These are springs without water, and mists driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved.

liberty to them promising, themselves being servants of the corruption, for by whom any one hath been overcome, to this one also he hath been brought to servitude,

for, if having escaped from the pollutions of the world, in the acknowledging of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and by these again being entangled, they have been overcome, become to them hath the last things worse than the first,

For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

They are an example of that true saying, The dog has gone back to the food it had put out, and the pig which had been washed to its rolling in the dirty earth.

Dear friends, this is now the second of two letters I am writing to you, in which I have been trying to stimulate your pure minds by reminding you

to remember the words which have been spoken hitherto by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour by your apostles:

and saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? For {ever since} the fathers fell asleep, all [things] have continued just as they have been from the beginning of creation."

For they wilfully ignore the fact that long ago there existed heavens and an earth which had been formed at God's command out of water and by water,

through which the then world, by water having been deluged, was destroyed;

but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

Therefore, dear friends, [because you] know [this] beforehand, guard yourselves so that you do not lose your own safe position [because you] have been led away by the error of lawless persons.