The Lord does not delay [as though He were unable to act] and is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is [extraordinarily] patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

And consider the patience of our Lord [His delay in judging and avenging wrongs] as salvation [that is, allowing time for more to be saved]; just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him [by God],

suffering themselves, as the penalty for the suffering that they have inflicted. They think that pleasure consists in the self-indulgence of the moment. They are a stain and a disgrace, indulging, as they do, in their wanton revelry, even while joining you at your feasts.

And the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a loud noise, and the elements, suffering from excessive heat, shall be dissolved, and the earth and the works in it shall be burned down.

These men, like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct created to be caught and killed, abuse the things that they do not understand, and so by their corruption they will be destroyed, suffering wrong as punishment for their wrongdoing.

The Lord, therefore, knows how to deliver the pious from temptation, and to keep the wicked, who are even now suffering punishment, in readiness for 'the Day of Judgment'--

And I think it right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;

And they will exploit you in greed with fabricated words, whose judgment is not idle for long, and their destruction will not slumber.

For this is willfully ignored by them, that long ago there were heavens, and an earth that came together out of water and by water by the word of God,

for as long as that upright man was living among them, his upright soul, day and night, was always being tortured by what he saw and heard in their lawless actions --