Chapter 1
1 Simon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those with us who have received the precious gift of faith in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:
2 that grace and peace grow in you more and more through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord!
3 Since his divine power has given us every gift for life and godliness, through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness,
4 and through them he has given us such great and precious promises, so that you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption of the desires which reign in the world.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to unite goodness with goodness, and goodness with goodness,
6. To discernment, temperance; to temperance patience, has patience piety,
7 To piety, brotherly love, to brotherly love charity.
8 If these virtues are in you and abound in you, they will leave you neither idle nor barren in the knowledge of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 For he who lacks them is a man who has short sight, a blind man; he has forgotten how he was cleansed from his former sins.
10 Therefore, my brothers, be all the more diligent to secure by your good works your calling and election; for if you do these things you will never stumble.
11 And so you will be richly given access to the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
12 That is why I will be careful to remind you of these things continually, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have.
13 I believe it is my duty, as long as I am in this tent, to keep you awake by my warnings;
14 for I know that I will soon leave it, as Our Lord Jesus Christ has made known to me.
15 I also want to ensure that you can always, after my departure, recall these things.
16 For it was not on the basis of cleverly devised fables that we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but as eyewitnesses of his majesty.
17 Indeed, he received honor and glory from God the Father when a voice from the Majestic Glory was heard saying, »This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.«
18 And we ourselves heard this voice from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.
19 And so the prophetic Scripture was confirmed for us, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
20 But above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture comes from an interpretation of its own,
21 For no prophecy ever had its origin in the human will, but the holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 2
1 Now, as there were also false prophets among the people, so there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, denying the Lord who redeemed them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
2 Many will follow them in their disordered conduct, and will expose the doctrine of truth to slander.
3 In their greed, they will exploit you with deceitful words; but their condemnation has long since ceased, and their ruin has not slept.
4 For if God has not spared the angels who had sinned, but cast them into hell and delivered them to the depths of darkness, where he keeps them for judgment;
5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, him eighth, as a preacher of righteousness, when he brought the flood upon a world of the ungodly;
6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to total destruction and reduced them to ashes, as an example to the ungodly ones to come,
7 and if he has delivered righteous Lot, who was grieved by the conduct of these wicked men
8 (for, because of what he saw and heard, this righteous man, continuing to dwell among them, had his virtuous soul tormented daily by their wicked deeds):
9 that's The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to reserve the wicked for punishment on the day of judgment.,
10 But especially those who indulge in the impure desires of the flesh and despise sovereignty. Bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to blaspheme the glorious ones,
11 when angels, greater in strength and power, do not bring [before the Lord] a slanderous judgment against them.
12 But they, being like stupid animals, destined by nature to be caught and to perish, heap abuse on what they do not understand, and they too will perish in their own corruption:
13 This will be the wages of their iniquity. Their happiness is to spend each day in luxury; they are nothing but stain and shame; they take pleasure in deceiving you, feasting with you.
14 Their eyes are full of adultery, insatiable for sin; they entice fickle souls with their lures; their hearts are trained in greed: they are children of the curse.
15 They have left the right path and have gone astray, following the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness,
16 But he was rebuked for his disobedience: a mute beast of burden, making a human voice, restrained the prophet’s madness.
17 They are fountains without water, clouds driven by a whirlwind: the depths of darkness are reserved for them.
18 With their pompous and empty theories, they attract into the lusts of the flesh, into libertinism, those who had scarcely withdrawn from men nourished in error.
19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves to corruption; for one is a slave to the one by whom one has allowed oneself to be overcome.
20 For if those who, through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, have escaped the corruption of the world, are overcome again by entangled in it, their last state has become worse than the first.
21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back and abandon the holy law which they had been taught.
22 What happened to them is what the proverb says with great truth: »The dog returned to its own vomit» and »The washed sow wallowed in the mire.«
Chapter 3
1 My beloved, this is now the second letter I have written to you: in both I appeal to your memories, to stir your sound minds
2 to remember the things foretold by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior, taught by your apostles.
3 Above all, understand this: In the last days mockers will come, full of derision, following their own lusts,
4 and saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our fathers died, all things continue as they have since the beginning of creation.".
5 They deliberately ignore the fact that the heavens existed from the beginning, and the earth, which the word of God brought forth out of water by means of water,
6 and that by that very means the world of that time perished, submerged.
7 As for the heavens and the earth that now exist, the same word of God holds them in reserve and keeps them for fire, for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
8 But there is one thing, beloved, which you must not ignore, that with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
9 No, the Lord is not delaying the fulfillment of his promise, as some imagine; but he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; on that day the heavens will pass away with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth will be laid bare, together with everything in it.
11 Since all things are destined to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in holiness and godliness?,
12 awaiting and hastening the coming of the day of God, in which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the elements will melt in the heat?
13 But we are waiting, according to his promise, for "new heavens and a new earth," where righteousness dwells.
14 Since you are waiting for this, beloved, make every effort to be found by him spotless and blameless in peace.
15 Believe that the long patience of Our Lord is for your salvation, as Paul, our beloved brother, also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him.
16 This is what he does in all his letters where he addresses these subjects; there are passages in them that are difficult to understand, and which ignorant and unstable people misinterpret, as they do the other Scriptures, to their destruction,
17 Therefore, beloved, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard, lest you be carried away by the error of these ungodly people and fall from your own steadfastness.
18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen!
