Simon Peter, a bondservant and Apostle of Jesus Christ: To those to whom there has been allotted the same precious faith as that which is ours through the righteousness of our God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

For his power divine has granted to us everything needful for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and virtue.

By these he has granted his promises to us, precious and splendid; so that through them you may become partners of the divine nature, now that you have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

For the man who has not these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having no memory of how he was made clean from his old sins.

For this reason, brethren, be all the more in earnest to make sure that God has called you and chosen you; for it is certain that so long as you practise these things, you will never stumble.

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.

for no prophecy has ever yet originated in man's will, but men who were led by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Now there were false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you too, who will insidiously introduce destructive heresies and deny the Master who has bought them, thus bringing on themselves swift destruction.

In their covetousness, with cunning words, they will make merchandise of you; those whose doom has not been idle from of old, and whose destruction has not been slumbering.

For if God spared not the angels who had sinned, but having cast them down to the deepest pit of gloom has delivered them to chains of darkness to be kept for judgment;

having eyes full of an adulteress, and unable to cease from sin; beguiling unestablished souls: having a heart which has been made fat with covetousness; children of the curse:

These men are waterless wells, and clouds driven by a fierce wind, for whom the gloom of darkness has been reserved into an age.

promising them freedom, while they themselves are bondmen of corruption, for by what any man has been overcome, of this he has also been enslaved.

For if, [after they] have escaped from the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and they are again entangled in these [things] [and] succumb to [them], the last [state] has become worse for them than the first.

For it was better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment which has been delivered unto them.

It has happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog turning to his own vomit again, and the sow that had washed to wallowing in the mire.

Saying, Where is the hope of his coming? From the death of the fathers till now everything has gone on as it was from the making of the world.

But, since God has promised it, we look forward to new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness will prevail.

And be certain that the long waiting of the Lord is for salvation; even as our brother Paul has said in his letters to you, from the wisdom which was given to him;

speaking of this as he has done in all his letters ??letters containing some knotty points, which ignorant and unsteady souls twist (as they do the rest of the scriptures) to their own destruction.