For his divine power has given us everything that is needful for a life of piety, as we advance in the knowledge of him who called us by a glorious manifestation of his goodness.

For it was through this that he gave us what we prize as the greatest of his promises, that through them you might participate in the divine nature, now that you have fled from the corruption in the world, resulting from human passions.

Surely the man who has not these virtues is shortsighted even to blindness, and has chosen to forget that he has been purified from his sins of the past!

I shall, therefore, always be ready to remind you of all this, even though you know it and are firmly established in the Truth that you now hold.

for I know that the time for this 'tent' of mine to be put away is soon coming, as our Lord Jesus Christ himself assured me.

These were the words that we heard, borne to our ears from Heaven, when we were with him on that Sacred Mountain.

And still stronger is the assurance that we have in the teaching of the Prophets; to which you will do well to pay attention (as if it were a lamp shining in a gloomy place), until the Day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts.

But first be assured of this:--There is no prophetic teaching found in Scripture that can be interpreted by man's unaided reason;

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.

If, after having escaped the polluting influences of the world, through knowing our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, men are again entangled in them, and give way to them, their last state has become worse than their first.

It would, indeed, have been better for them not to have known the Way of Righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn away from the holy Command delivered to them.

First be assured of this, that, as the age draws to an end, scoffers, led by their own passions,

For they wilfully shut their eyes to the fact that long ago the heavens existed; and the earth, also--formed out of water and by the action of water, by the fiat of God;

and that by the same means the world which then existed was destroyed in a deluge of water.

But you, dear friends, must never shut your eyes to the fact that, to the Lord, one day is the same as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise, as some count slowness; but he is forbearing with you, as it is not his will that any of you should perish, but that all should be brought to repentance.

The Day of the Lord will come like a thief; and on that day the heavens will pass away with a crash, the elements will be burnt up and dissolved, and the earth and all that is in it will be disclosed.

Regard our Lord's forbearance as your one hope of Salvation. This is what our dear Brother Paul wrote to you, with the wisdom that God gave him.

Do you, therefore, dear friends, now that you know this beforehand, be on your guard against being led away by the errors of reckless people, and so lapsing from your present steadfastness;