For if you have these things in good measure, they will make you fertile and full of fruit in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For this reason, my brothers, take all the more care to make your selection and approval certain; for if you do these things you will never have a fall:

For so the way will be open to you into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

For this reason I will be ready at all times to keep your memory of these things awake, though you have the knowledge of them now and are well based in your present faith.

For I am conscious that in a short time I will have to put off this tent of flesh, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.

And I will take every care so that you may have a clear memory of these things after my death.

But there were false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it.

And a great number will go with them in their evil ways, through whom the true way will have a bad name.

And in their desire for profit they will come to you with words of deceit, like traders doing business in souls: whose punishment has been ready for a long time and their destruction is watching for them.

But these men, like beasts without reason, whose natural use is to be taken and put to death, crying out against things of which they have no knowledge, will undergo that same destruction which they are designing for others;

Saying that they will be free, while they themselves are the servants of destruction; because whatever gets the better of a man makes a servant of him.

Having first of all the knowledge that in the last days there will be men who, ruled by their evil desires, will make sport of holy things,

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; and in that day the heavens will be rolled up with a great noise, and the substance of the earth will be changed by violent heat, and the world and everything in it will be burned up.

Looking for and truly desiring the coming of the day of God, when the heavens will come to an end through fire, and the substance of the earth will be changed by the great heat?

But having faith in his word, we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth, which will be the resting-place of righteousness.