For if you possess these qualities, and if they continue to increase among you, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in attaining a full knowledge of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah.

because no prophecy ever originated through a human decision. Instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

In their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. The ancient verdict against them is still in force, and their destruction is not delayed.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but threw them into the lowest hell and imprisoned them in chains of deepest darkness, holding them for judgment;

Being bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to slander glorious beings. Yet even angels, although they are greater in strength and power, do not bring a slanderous accusation against them from the Lord.

These people, like irrational animals, are mere creatures of instinct that are born to be caught and killed. They insult what they don't understand, and like animals they, too, will be destroyed,

suffering harm as punishment for their wrongdoing. They take pleasure in wild parties in broad daylight. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceitful pleasures while they eat with you.

With eyes full of adultery, they cannot get enough of sin. They seduce unsteady souls and have had their hearts expertly trained in greed. They are doomed to a curse.

They have left the straight path and wandered off to follow the path of Bosor's son Balaam, who loved the reward he got for doing wrong.

By talking high-sounding nonsense and using sinful cravings of the flesh, they entice people who have just escaped from those who live in error.

Promising them freedom, they themselves are slaves to depravity, for a person is a slave to whatever conquers him.

For if, after escaping the world's corruptions through a full knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus, the Messiah, they are again entangled and conquered by those corruptions, then their last condition is worse than their former one.

But they deliberately ignore the fact that long ago the heavens existed and the earth was formed by God's word out of water and with water,

He speaks about this subject in all his letters. Some things in them are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, leading to their own destruction, as they do the rest of the Scriptures.