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;

For whoever lacks these qualities is blind or near-sighted, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his former sins.

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.

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 it would have been better for them never to have known the way of uprightness than after knowing it to have turned their backs upon the sacred command with which they had been intrusted.

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,