For if these things are really yours and are continually increasing, they will keep you from becoming ineffective and unproductive in your pursuit of knowing our Lord Jesus Christ more intimately.

Therefore, I intend to remind you constantly of these things even though you know them and are well established in the truth that you now have.

especially those who indulge their fleshly desires and who despise authority. Brazen and insolent, they are not afraid to insult the glorious ones,

yet even angels, who are much more powerful, do not bring a slanderous judgment against them before the Lord.

But these men, like irrational animals -- creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed -- do not understand whom they are insulting, and consequently in their destruction they will be destroyed,

suffering harm as the wages for their harmful ways. By considering it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight, they are stains and blemishes, indulging in their deceitful pleasures when they feast together with you.

These men are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm, for whom the utter depths of darkness have been reserved.

For by speaking high-sounding but empty words they are able to entice, with fleshly desires and with debauchery, people who have just escaped from those who reside in error.

Although these false teachers promise such people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to immorality. For whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved.

They are illustrations of this true proverb: "A dog returns to its own vomit," and "A sow, after washing herself, wallows in the mire."

Now, dear friends, do not let this one thing escape your notice, that a single day is like a thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years are like a single day.

Since all these things are to melt away in this manner, what sort of people must we be, conducting our lives in holiness and godliness,

But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides.

Therefore, dear friends, since you are waiting for these things, strive to be found at peace, without spot or blemish, when you come into his presence.

speaking of these things in all his letters. Some things in these letters are hard to understand, things the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they also do to the rest of the scriptures.