Therefore, Brothers, do your best to put God's Call and Selection of you beyond all doubt; for, if you do this, you will never fall.

For thus you will be given a triumphant admission into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

So I will do my best to enable you, at any time after my departure, to call these truths to mind.

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 there were false prophets also in the nation, just as there will be false teachers among you, men who will secretly introduce ruinous divisions, disowning even the Lord who bought them, and bringing speedy Ruin upon themselves.

There will be many, too, who will follow their licentious courses, and cause the Way of the Truth to be maligned.

In their covetousness they will try to make you a source of profit by their fabrications; but for a long time past their Sentence has not been standing idle, nor their Ruin slumbering.

These men, however, like animals without reason, intended by nature to be caught and killed--these men, I say, malign those of whom they know nothing, and will assuredly perish through their own corruption,

will come and ask scoffingly-- 'Where is his promised Coming? Ever since our fathers passed to their rest, everything remains just as it was when the world was first created!'

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.

while you await and hasten the coming of the Day of God. At its coming the heavens will be dissolved in fire, and the elements melted by heat,