For it was not mere stories of fancy that we followed when we told you of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of His majesty.

In their greed they will exploit you with messages manufactured by themselves. From of old their condemnation has not been idle and their destruction has not been slumbering.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but hurled them down to Tartarus and committed them to dark dungeons to await their doom,

and if He did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others when He brought the flood upon the world of godless people;

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 --

especially those who satisfy their lower nature by indulging in its evil passions which defile them, and who despise authority. Daring, headstrong men! They do not tremble when they abuse persons of majesty,

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 is not slow about His promise, in the sense in which some think of slowness, but He is really dealing patiently with you, because He is not willing for any to perish but for all to have an opportunity to repent?