1

1 From Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained equally precious faith to ours in the righteousness of our God and saviour Jesus Christ,

2 grace to you, and peace be plentiful in the acknowledgment of God and Jesus our Lord,

3 since his divine power has bestowed on us everything pertaining to life and godliness through acknowledgment of him who called us through glory and virtue,

4 qualities through which precious and very great promises have been given to us, in order that through these you might become partakers of divine nature, having fled from the corruption in the world, which is driven by covetousness.

5 And for this very reason, while bringing all zeal to bear, supply virtue in your faith, and in your virtue, knowledge,

6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, endurance, and in your endurance, godliness,

7 and in your godliness, brotherly affection, and in your brotherly affection, love.

8 For if these things belong to you and abound, they establish you as neither inactive nor unfruitful in the acknowledgment of our Lord Jesus Christ.

9 For he who lacks these things is blind, short-sighted, oblivious of the cleansing of his past sins.

10 Therefore, brothers, be eager rather to make your calling and election steadfast. For if you do these things, you will certainly never stumble.

11 For this is how the way into the age-abiding kingdom of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you.

12 This is why I will not be negligent in always reminding you about these things, although you know them and have been confirmed in the present truth.

13 And I consider it a righteous matter, as long as I am in this tent, to rouse you in reminding you,

14 knowing that I shall imminently be divesting myself of my tent, as indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me.

15 And I will also be eager to always have you making remembrance of these things after my departure.

16 For we have not made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ by following sophisticated fables, but as having been eye-witnesses of his majesty.

17 For he received honour and glory from God the father when an utterance was delivered to him, such as is from magnificent glory, saying, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am very pleased,”

18 and we heard this utterance transmitted from heaven when we were with him in the holy mountain.

19 Yet we have the more steadfast prophetic word whereby you do well if you heed it, like a lamp shining in a drab place until the day dawns and the light-bearer rises in your hearts,

20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes about by issuing itself.

21 For prophecy was never produced by the will of man, but when holy men of God spoke as they were borne along by holy spirit.

2

1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will surreptitiously introduce destructive heresies, also denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves.

2 And many will follow their debaucheries, through whom the way of the truth will be blasphemed.

3 And prompted by greed, they will make merchandise of you with fabricated words – they for whom judgment from long ago will not lie idle and whose destruction will not slumber.

4 For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but consigned them to Tartarus in chains of underworld gloom under guard and delivered them to judgment,

5 and he did not spare the old world, but he did preserve Noah in a company of eight, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood onto a world of the ungodly,

6 and as he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha to ashes, he condemned them with a downfall, making an example for those who intend to be ungodly,

7 and he delivered righteous Lot who was worn down by the behaviour of those unprincipled individuals in their debauchery,

8 for he who was righteous, dwelling among them, at the sight and sound of them tortured his righteous mind day after day at their lawless deeds –

9 if so – then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly from temptation and to guard the unrighteous up to the day of judgment to be punished,

10 and especially those walking after the flesh with depraved desires, also despising lordship. Daring they are, presumptuous, not afraid to blaspheme those in glory,

11 where angels, being greater in strength and power, do not pronounce a defamatory judgment against them before the Lord.

12 But these, like unreasoning animals in the order of nature, born to capture and to corrupt, who blaspheme against those they do not understand, will be utterly destroyed in their own corruption,

13 who will receive the wages of iniquity in full, since they consider running riot in the daytime a pleasure. They are stains and blemishes, revelling in their deceits as they feast with you,

14 having eyes full of an adulteress and being unceasing in sin, enticing unstable people, having a heart practised in fraud, cursed children;

15 abandoning the straight way, they gave gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of iniquity,

16 and suffered the conviction of his own transgression, when a mute beast of burden, speaking with a human voice, prevented the deranged intention of the prophet.

17 These individuals are sources without water, clouds driven by a tempest, for whom the underworld gloom of darkness throughout the age is reserved.

18 For they speak bombastically vain words as they entice – with lusts of the flesh and debaucheries – those who actually had fled from those who conduct themselves in error.

19 While they promise them freedom, they themselves are servants of corruption. For one is brought into slavery by anyone to whom one yields.

20 For if having fled the defilements of the world in acknowledgment of the Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, they again become entangled by these things and yield to them, their final state is then worse than their first one.

21 For it would have been better for them not to have acknowledged the way of righteousness than for them having acknowledged it to turn aside from the holy commandment handed down to them.

22 And the enactment of the true proverb has happened to them: a dog which has returned to its own vomit, and a washed sow to wallowing in the mud.

3

1 Beloved, I am writing this second of my epistles to you now, in which I am stirring your honest mind with a reminder,

2 to remember the words spoken before by the holy prophets, and your apostolic command from the Lord and saviour,

3 knowing this first of all, that in the latter days scoffers will come walking after their own desires,

4 and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, everything has been continuing this way from the beginning of creation.”

5 For they willingly ignore the fact that the heavens have been in existence from long ago, and land came out of water and through water, and it holds together by the word of God,

6 by which means the world of that time was flooded with water and perished.

7 But the present heavens and earth, by his word, are kept in store, reserved to fire until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly men.

8 Let not one of you fail to notice this one fact, beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.

9 The Lord will not delay with the promise, as some consider delay, but he is longsuffering towards us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

10 For the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, on which the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn up and will be dissolved, and the earth and the works in it will be thoroughly burnt up.

11 When all these things have been dissolved, then, what kind of people should you be in holy conduct and godliness,

12 awaiting and eagerly seeking the coming of the day of God by means of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the elements will be burnt and melt?

13 But we await new heavens and a new earth, according to his promise, places in which righteousness dwells.

14 Therefore, beloved, while waiting for these things be zealous to be found without spot and without blemish by him in peace.

15 And consider our Lord's longsuffering as salvation, as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him,

16 as indeed in all his epistles, in which he speaks about these matters, matters in which there are some things that are difficult to understand which unlearned and unstable individuals pervert, as they do with other scriptures, to their own destruction.

17 You, therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, be on your guard that you are not led away likewise by the error of the unprincipled, and you fall away from your own steadfast ground.

18 But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and throughout the day of the Age. Amen.