From Simeon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, have been granted a faith just as precious as ours.

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;

Because of which, the precious and greatest promises have been given to us, so that through these ye might become companions of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption in the world in lust.

But, anyone who lacks these qualities is [spiritually] blind and shortsighted, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed [i.e., forgiven] of his past sins.

Therefore I will not neglect to always remind you about these things, although having known them, and having been established in the present truth.

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.

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.

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 heavenly agents who sinned, but delivered them up to chains of darkness, having been cast into hell being reserved for judgment,

But these men, like irrational beasts of nature, having been born for capture and destruction, speaking evil at which things they do not understand, will be destroyed in their corruption,

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.

promising them freedom, while they themselves are bondmen of corruption, for by what any man has been overcome, of this he has also been enslaved.

For if, having escaped the defilements of the world by knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and, having been again entangled in these, they are overcome, the last things have become worse for them than the first.

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.

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:

"where is the promise of his coming? for since our fathers are dead, the state of things is the same it has ever been since the beginning of the world."

For they willfully ignore the fact that long ago the heavens existed and the earth that had been formed by God's command out of water and through water,

by which the world then perished, having been overflowed with water.

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.

So, dearly beloved, since you have been forewarned, you must always be on your guard against being led astray by the errors of lawless men, and so against falling away from your present firmness;