Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the uprightness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have been given a faith as privileged 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;

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 whoever lacks these qualities is blind or near-sighted, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his former 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 they were no fictitious stories that we followed when we informed you of the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and of his coming, 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 greed they will exploit you with pretended arguments. From of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not slumbered.

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 wells without water, and mists driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness has 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 never to have been acquainted with the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to have turned aside 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, that have been spoken aforetime by the holy prophets, and the injunction of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:

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.

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;