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.

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 also that world was destroyed, through being flooded with water.

while you await and hasten the coming of the Day of God, which will cause the heavens to burn up and dissolve and the heavenly bodies to blaze and melt.

speaking of it as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which ignorant, unsteadfast people twist to their own ruin, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures.