For his power divine has granted to us everything needful for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and virtue.

For this very reason do your best to add to your faith manliness, and to manliness knowledge,

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 the man who lacks these virtues is blind, short-sighted, forgetful of his cleansing from his old sins.

So, brothers, take diligent care to make your calling and election sure; for if you do this, you will never stumble.

For so the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you.

since I know that the time for me to strike tent comes swiftly on, even as our Lord Jesus Christ pointed out to me.

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 he did receive honor and glory from God the Father, when there was borne such a voice to him from the Majestic Glory, This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I delight;

For no prophecy was ever brought by the will of man; but moved by the Holy Spirit, men spoke for God.

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;

(for that righteous man, living among them, tormented his righteous soul in seeing and hearing, day after day, their lawless deeds),

then be sure that the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to keep the wicked (who are even now enduring punishment) for the "Day of Judgment";

He was, however, rebuked for his own transgression; a dumb ass spoke with a man's voice, and stopped the madness of the prophet.

Such men are like waterless springs, or mists storm-driven; for them the blackness of darkness has been reserved.

For speaking great swelling words of vanity, they entangle, by their lasciviousness, in the lusts of the flesh, those who are just about to escape from the men that live in misconduct.

They promise them liberty, while they themselves are slaves of rottenness! (For indeed a man is the slave of anything which masters him.)

For if, after having escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, men are again entangled in them and overpowered, their last state is become worse than their 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.

and say, "Where is the promise of His coming? For since the day that our fathers fell asleep everything continues as it was from the beginning of the creation."

For they willingly ignore the fact that there were heaven, from of old, and an earth formed out of water and through water, by the word of God;

But the heavens and earth that now are, by the same word of God, have been reserved for fire, and are being kept for the Day of Judgment, and for the destruction of ungodly men.

while you look for and hasten the coming of the Day of God. At its coming the heavens, being on fire, will be dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt with fervent heat.

But according to his promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness makes her dwelling.

And so, beloved, since you are looking for these things, continually give diligence that you may be found in peace, unspotted and blameless in his sight.