For if these virtues are yours in abounding measure, they render you not idle nor unfruitful, until you come into the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For we were not following cunningly devised fables, when we told you of the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eye-witnesses of his Majesty.

In their covetousness, with cunning words, they will make merchandise of you; those whose doom has not been idle from of old, and whose destruction has not been slumbering.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to chains of darkness, and reserved them for judgment;

if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon an ungodly world;

even where angels, though surpassing them in strength and might, do not bring a railing judgment against them before the Lord.

Indeed it would have been better for them not to have known the Way of Righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy command delivered to them.

Do not forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord does not loiter over his promise, as some men esteem loitering; but he is longsuffering toward you, not purposing that any should perish, but that all should pass on to repentance.