spiritual blessing and peace be to you in increasing abundance through a full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord;

because His divine power has given us everything that is needful for life and piety, through our full knowledge of Him who through His glory and excellence has called us to Him.

For if you have these qualities and they continue to increase in you, they will make you neither idle nor unproductive in attaining a full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Many people will follow their immoral ways, and because of them the true Way will be abused,

They have eyes full of adultery and insatiable by sin. They practice enticing unsteady souls. They have trained their hearts in greed. They are doomed to a curse!

They have left the straight road and gone astray. They have followed the road that Balaam, the son of Beor, trod, who fell in love with the profits of wrongdoing

For if, after men have escaped the corrupting ways of the world through a full knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they again become entangled in them and are conquered by them, then their last condition is worse than their former one.

and saying, "Where is His promised coming? For ever since our forefathers fell asleep everything has remained exactly as it was from the beginning of creation!"