Beginning

1 Simon Peter, a servant and an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to you who have obtained equal precious faith with us, by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:

² Grace and peace be multiplied to you, through the acknowledging of God, and of Jesus Christ our Lord.

³ His divine power has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness, through the acknowledging of Him Who has called us to Glory and virtue;

⁴ by which most great and precious promises are given to us, so that by them you could be partakers of the divine nature (in that you flee the corruption which is in the world through lust).

⁵ Therefore, give all diligence to this. Moreover, join virtue with your faith; and with virtue, knowledge;

⁶ and with knowledge, temperance; and with temperance, patience; and with patience, godliness;

⁷ and with godliness, brotherly kindness; and with brotherly kindness, love.

⁸ For if these things are among you, and abound, they will cause you to be neither idle nor unfruitful in the acknowledging of our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁹ For the one who does not have these things is blind and short-sighted and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

¹⁰ Therefore, brothers, give all the more diligence to making your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you shall never fall.

¹¹ For by this means shall entry into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be abundantly provided to you.

¹² Therefore, I will not be negligent to always remind you of these things (though you have knowledge and are established in the present truth).

¹³ For I think it right (as long as I am in this body) to stir you up by reminding you.

¹⁴ I know that the time is at hand that I must lay down this, my body, just as our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me.

¹⁵ Therefore, I will always endeavor, so that you also may be reminded of these things after my departing.

¹⁶ For we did not follow cunningly-devised fables when we opened to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we saw His majesty with our own eyes.

¹⁷ For He received honor and glory from God the Father when there came such a voice to Him from that excellent Glory: “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased.”

¹⁸ And this voice we heard when it came from Heaven, being with Him on the Holy Mount.

¹⁹ We also have the enduring Word of the Prophets—to which you do well to pay attention, as to a light that shines in a dark place—until the Day dawns and the Day Star arise in your hearts.

²⁰ So that you first know this: that no Prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.

²¹ For the Prophecy did not come by the will of man. But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

2 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who shall secretly bring in damnable heresies - even denying the Lord Who has bought them - and bring upon themselves swift damnation.

² And many shall follow their destructive ways, by whom the way of truth shall be blasphemed.

³ And through covetousness they shall, with crafty words, make merchandise of you. Their ancient condemnation is not lingering. And their destruction does not slumber.

⁴ For if God did not spare the angels who had sinned, but cast them down into Hell and delivered them into chains of darkness (to be kept for damnation);

⁵ nor spare the old world (save Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness), but brought in the Flood upon the world of the ungodly;

⁶ and turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes (condemning and overthrowing them), and made them an example to those who would live ungodly afterward;

⁷ and delivered Lot only, overwrought with the unclean conduct of the wicked

⁸ (for he - being righteous and dwelling among them - tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their unlawful deeds),

⁹ then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of trials and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the Day of Judgment;

¹⁰ and chiefly those who walk after the flesh (in the lust of uncleanness) and despise government. They are presumptuous, standing in their own conceit, and unafraid to blaspheme God’s glories.

¹¹ Whereas, the angels (who are greater, both in power and might) do not bring slanderous judgment against them before the Lord.

¹² But these, as irrational animals (born in nature for capture and corruption), blaspheme those things which they do not understand, and shall perish through their own corruption;

¹³ and shall receive the wages of unrighteousness as those who count it pleasure to live in debauchery every day. They are spots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you;

¹⁴ having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease to sin, enticing unstable souls. They have hearts trained in covetousness - the children of the curse -

¹⁵ who, forsaking the right way, have gone astray. They follow the way of Balaam of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.

¹⁶ But he was rebuked for his iniquity. The dumb beast, speaking with man’s voice, forbade the foolishness of the prophet.

¹⁷ These are wells without water - clouds carried about by the wind - to whom the black darkness is reserved forever.

¹⁸ For in speaking boastful words of frivolity, they allure (with lewdness and lusts of the flesh) those who had barely escaped from those walking in error;

¹⁹ promising them freedom, but themselves the servants of corruption. For by whomever one is overcome, to him also is he in bondage.

²⁰ For if they - after they have escaped from the filthiness of the world through the acknowledging of the Lord and the Savior Jesus Christ - are once again entangled in it and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.

²¹ For it had been better for them not to have acknowledged the way of righteousness than to turn from the Holy Commandment given to them after they have acknowledged it.

²² But it has come to them according to the true proverb, “The dog has returned to his own vomit,” and “a sow, being washed, to wallowing in the mire.”

3 This second letter I now write to you, beloved (with which I stir up and warn your pure minds),

² to remind you of the words which were foretold by the holy Prophets; and of the Commandment by us, the Apostles of the Lord and Savior.

³ First, understand this: that in the last days there shall come mockers, who will walk after their lusts

⁴ and say, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the Fathers died, all things continue just as from the beginning of the creation.”

⁵ For of this they are willingly ignorant: that the heavens were of old; and the Earth—which was of the water and by the water—by the Word of God;

⁶ through which water the world that then existed perished, being flooded.

⁷ But the heavens and Earth which exist now are stored up by the same Word, and reserved for fire until the Day of Condemnation, and of the destruction of ungodly men.

⁸ Dearly beloved, do not be ignorant of this one thing: that one day is as a thousand years with the Lord, and a thousand years as one day.

⁹ The Lord of that promise is not slow as some think of slowness; but is patient toward us, and would have no one perish, but have all come to repentance.

¹⁰ But the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, on which the heavens shall pass away with a great rushing noise and the elements shall melt with heat. And the Earth, with the works in it, shall be burnt up.

¹¹ Therefore, seeing that all these things must be dissolved, what kind of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness

¹² (expecting and earnestly desiring the coming of that Day of God by which the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with heat)?

¹³ But we look for new heavens and a new Earth (according to His promise), in which dwells righteousness.

¹⁴ Therefore, beloved, seeing that you look for such things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless.

¹⁵ And consider that the patience of our Lord is salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him.

¹⁶ As in all his letters, he speaks of these things; among which, some things are hard to understand (which the unlearned and unstable twist, as they do other Scriptures to their own destruction).

¹⁷ Therefore you, beloved - seeing you know these things beforehand - beware, lest you are also plucked away with the error of the wicked and fall from your own steadfastness.

¹⁸ But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be glory, both now and forevermore. Amen.