Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them which have obtained like precious faith with us in the righteousness that cometh of our God and saviour Jesus Christ.

Grace and peace [that special sense of spiritual well-being] be multiplied to you in the [true, intimate] knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

As his divine power has given us all things which pertain to life and piety, through the knowledge of him that has called us to his own glory and virtue,

by which he has granted to us his precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.

Wherefore I shall be ready always to put you in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and are established in the truth which is with you .

And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.

And we hold the prophetic word more confirmed, to which ye do well to attend, as to a lamp shining in a dark passage, until the day dawn, and the morning-star arise upon your hearts.

There were false prophets among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you: which privily shall bring in damnable sects, even denying the Lord that hath bought them, and bring upon themselves swift damnation.

And many shall follow their damnable ways, by which the way of truth shall be evil spoken of;

And did not have mercy on the world which then was, but only kept safe Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he let loose the waters over the world of the evil-doers;

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,

when the angels, which are greater both in power and might, receive not of the Lord railing judgment against them.

But these, as unreasoning creatures, born natural animals to be taken and destroyed, speaking evil in matters about which they are ignorant, will in their destroying surely be destroyed,

For the evil which overtakes them is the reward of their evil-doing: such men take their pleasure in the delights of the flesh even in the daytime; they are like the marks of a disease, like poisoned wounds among you, feasting together with you in joy;

having eyes full of adultery, and which cannot be restrained from sin: ensnaring unstable souls, and having a heart practised in rapine; cursed people:

and have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, which loved the reward of unrighteousness:

These are fountains without water, clouds driven by a tempest, to which is reserved the blackness of darkness.

They promise them liberty, while they themselves are slaves of rottenness! (For indeed a man is the slave of anything which masters him.)

For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of uprightness than after knowing it to have turned their backs upon the sacred command with which they had been intrusted.

But the true proverb is verified in them, The dog hath returned to his own vomit; and the sow which was washed to its wallowing in the mire.

THIS second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I rouse up your sincere mind by awakening your recollection

that you should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles:

This first understand: that there shall come in the last days mockers, which will walk after their own lusts

For they wilfully ignore the fact that long ago there existed heavens and an earth which had been formed at God's command out of water and by water,

by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

But the present heaven and the present earth have been kept for destruction by fire, which is waiting for them on the day of the judging and destruction of evil men.

But there is one thing, my brethren, you ought to be appriz'd of, which is this, that "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

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?

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be disclosed.

looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, which will cause the burning heavens to be dissolved, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?

But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

And be certain that the long waiting of the Lord is for salvation; even as our brother Paul has said in his letters to you, from the wisdom which was given to him;

as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.